Johns Hopkins University opens its doors with Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908) as first president. Gilman declares that the new university is dedicated to “knowledge for the world” with scholars who are “strong, bright, useful and true.”
Hopkins is the first U.S. school based on the German university model, emphasizing research and science and making it primarily a graduate school for white men. A $7 million bequest from the will of Johns Hopkins’, the largest philanthropic gift at the time in America, provides for a hospital, training colleges, an orphanage and a university.
The first class of women is admitted in 1970 and the first African American undergraduate in 1945. The University has spawned many other national firsts, among them the work of Abel Wolman who engineering safe drinking water for major urban areas around the world.
