Purdue paid for the plane Amelia Earhart flew on her final attempt
In 1936 Purdue University's research foundation bought the Lockheed Electra that Amelia Earhart took on her round-the-world attempt. She had joined the faculty a year earlier, advising on flight training and women's careers at the nation's first university-owned airport. The same campus later opened America's first computer science department.
Purdue exists because Indiana wanted a share of the 1862 Morrill Act, which gave states land to fund colleges of agriculture and engineering. Towns across the state competed to host it. Tippecanoe County won in 1869 with a package that included $150,000 from Lafayette businessman John Purdue, plus county money and 100 acres of land, and the legislature named the school after its main benefactor. Teaching began on September 16, 1874, when 39 students met a staff of six instructors; the first degree, in chemistry, followed in 1875, the same autumn the first woman enrolled.
Early presidents argued over what kind of college it should be. Emerson White wanted an 'industrial college' focused on science, technology and agriculture rather than a copy of the classical universities, and resigned after the Indiana Supreme Court overturned his ban on fraternities. His successor James Smart is remembered for vowing, after an 1894 fire, to rebuild Heavilon Hall 'one brick higher'. By 1925 Purdue had the largest undergraduate engineering enrolment in the country, a lead it held for half a century.
War reshaped it. During the Second World War every department did military research or training, and physicists working on radar receivers found properties of germanium that led to the first transistor. More than 17,500 students, staff and alumni served, and some of the hundred-odd training centres set up around Indiana grew into today's regional campuses. Campus housing was desegregated in 1947, and Purdue joined ARPANET, a forerunner of the internet, in 1975.
Today it is a Big Ten founding member counting 27 astronauts among its affiliates, alongside 13 Nobel laureates. It has also expanded well beyond West Lafayette, turning the for-profit Kaplan University into Purdue University Global for adult learners and launching an Indianapolis campus in 2024.
Source: Purdue University
