Harvard University as students, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108 Olympic medals (46 gold, 41 silver and 21 bronze). Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first known printing press. In 1639, it was named "Harvard College" after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, who had left the school £779 and his scholar's library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted
Harvard University has been responsible for essentially all aspects of admission, instruction, and undergraduate life for women, and Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard in 1999. Drew Gilpin Faust, previously the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, became Harvard's president on July 1, 2007. In February 2018, Lawrence Seldon Bacow was designated to take office as its 29th president on July 1, 2018. Harvard's main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, about west-northwest of downtown Boston, and extends into the surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. Harvard Yard itself contains the central administrative offices and main libraries of the university,