About Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins was a Baltimore merchant and philanthropist who died in 1873, leaving $7 million to establish The Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was named for his father's family--hence the name Johns, his great-grandmother's maiden name. Hopkins' philosophy of education today reflects the ideal set forth by the University's first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, shortly after the school's founding in 1876. He believed that the ability to question, analyze, synthesize, and finally to understand a body of knowledge was superior to the rote memorization and passive acceptance of traditional wisdom so prevalent in higher education at the time.

Gilman's beliefs, first embodied at Hopkins, gave rise to the modern university in America. The school continues to reflect his ideas. An emphasis on research at both the graduate and undergraduate levels sets the tone for scholarly endeavors on campus.

Considered from the beginning to be among the nation's foremost private research universities, Hopkins has grown to comprise several graduate and undergraduate divisions, a major health system, a university press, a music conservatory, and international centers of study in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China.

The heart of The Johns Hopkins University is the Homewood campus , which houses the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering . The Georgian architecture and 140 acres of parks and lawns make it one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States. The student body comprises 3,300 undergraduates and 1,500 graduate students.

The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, which include the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Hygiene and Public Health, are located across town on the East Baltimore campus. The Peabody Conservatory of Music is located in downtown Baltimore. Additional research institutes of the University include the Applied Physics Laboratory , the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Space Telescope Science Institute (the primary research center for the Hubble Space Telescope project).

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Homewood houses more than two million volumes. It is complemented by the collections of the University's other divisions, such as the world-renowned Welch Medical Library in East Baltimore, and the Peabody Library.

The JHU News & Information Service has put together a nice page of additional information about Johns Hopkins University .