Yale University, one of the leading institutions of learning in America, situated at New Haven, Connecticut, was founded at Saybrook in 1701 as the collegiate school of the colony, under the trusteeship of the ten principal ministers, and in 1718, when it was removed to New Haven, named after Elihu Yale (1649–1721), a Boston (Mass.) man, who had been governor of Fort St George, Madras, acquired great wealth, and sent the young institution gifts of money and books to the extent of £800. The name Yale College, applied at first only to the new building, was given formally to the institution in its charter of 1745. A chair of Divinity was added in 1755, and another of Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy in 1771, though this was not permanently filled till 1794. Occasional grants were made by the legislature before the Revolution, and $30,000 was voted by the state in 1792. Schools of medicine (1812), theology (1822), and law (1824) were established; and, as reorganised in 1871, the university possesses also departments of philosophy and arts, the latter including, besides the classical course of 'Yale College' proper, the Sheffield Scientific School (begun 1847, endowed 1869), post-graduate courses, and a school of fine arts (1864). A great part of the studies in the third and fourth years is elective. The students number over 1200, half of them in the college proper; there are over seventy professors and fifty tutors and lecturers. Among the presidents have been Timothy Dwight and his grandson, T. D. Woolsey, and Noah Porter; and the two Sillimans were professors of Chemistry from 1802 to 1885. The library contains some 200,000 volumes; in 1891, 8700 vols. and some 22,000 pamphlets were added. The numerous buildings cover some 9 acres in the heart of the city, the oldest dating from 1752, and others including the School of Fine Arts, where the Trumbull (q. v.) paintings are housed, the Peabody Museum (1866), the observatory, the Sloane Memorial physical laboratory (1884), Lawrence and Dwight halls (1886), and the Kent chemical laboratory.
See books by Clap (1766), Kingsley (1879), Dexter, and Eaton (1883); and Four American Colleges (1895).