Duke University

Duke University, private coeducational institution of higher learning in Durham, North Carolina, U.S., affiliated with but not controlled by the United Methodist Church. In 1838 a regular program of education was initiated at a schoolhouse in Randolph county, to the west of Durham, and a year later the Union Institute Society was established to support and govern the school. The institution was initially incorporated as an academy; it reorganized as Normal College in 1851, changed its name to Trinity College in 1859, and moved to Durham in 1892. When a new charter was issued in 1924, the college became, under an endowment from the tobacco magnate James Buchanan Duke, Duke University; it was named for his father, Washington Duke, who had funded Trinity College and had persuaded its board of trustees to move the school to Durham. Total enrollment is approximately 14,000.

Duke maintained separate campuses for undergraduate men and women, Trinity College and Woman’s College, until they were merged in 1972 into Trinity College. Besides Trinity (liberal arts), the university includes schools of engineering, law, business, divinity, medicine, nursing, public policy, and the environment, and the graduate school offers a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The university’s medical centre is one of the most highly regarded institutions of its kind in the country. Notable campus facilities include Duke University Chapel, with its Gothic-style 210-foot (64-metre) tower; the Duke Lemur Center, focusing on prosimian research; the Nasher Museum of Art, containing displays of Greek and Roman antiquities, medieval sculpture, and American and European paintings; and Sarah P. Duke Gardens, which includes a large section devoted to East Asian flora. Prominent Duke alumni include heads of state Richard M. Nixon and Ricardo Lagos, politicians Ron Paul and Elizabeth Hanford Dole, writer Anne Tyler, physicist Charles Hard Townes, and philanthropist Melinda Gates.