Columbia began as King's College, then renamed itself to cheer the new republic
Founded in 1754 by royal charter of George II, King's College shut for eight years during the Revolution while soldiers used its only building as a barracks and hospital. When it reopened in 1784, New York's legislature ordered it renamed Columbia, and Alexander Hamilton, once a Patriot student there, helped rewrite its charter.
New Yorkers had been discussing a college since 1704. Classes opened in July 1754 under president Samuel Johnson on the grounds of Trinity Church, and the charter followed that October, making it the state's oldest institution of higher learning and the fifth-oldest in the country. Its second president, Myles Cooper, was an ardent Tory whose chief undergraduate opponent in campus debates was Hamilton, of the class of 1777. War brought looting of the library and occupation by American and then British forces until 1783.
In 1787 a committee led by John Jay and Hamilton produced a new charter placing the college under 24 trustees. George Washington, John Adams and both houses of Congress attended its commencement in 1789. The campus moved twice: to 49th Street and Madison Avenue in 1857, then in 1896, under Seth Low, to Morningside Heights, when it took the name Columbia University. Barnard College was created in 1889 because the university would not admit women, and Columbia College itself only admitted them in 1983.
Its record includes some dark chapters. In 1928 it opened Seth Low Junior College to reduce the number of Jewish students admitted to Columbia College; the Depression closed it in 1936. A 'War Issues' course created for the army in 1917 evolved into Contemporary Civilization, still a pillar of the undergraduate core, and the New York Times described its 1919 admissions process as the first modern college application. In 1968 student occupations forced out president Grayson Kirk.
Science made it famous. In the 1940s John Dunning, Isidor Rabi, Enrico Fermi and Polykarp Kusch began work that fed the Manhattan Project, building the first nuclear fission reactor in the Americas. Columbia researchers also contributed to the laser and maser, nuclear magnetic resonance and early evidence for plate tectonics. It was the first American school to award the MD and it administers the Pulitzer Prizes.
Source: Columbia University
