Columbia University

university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Originally established in as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in New York State, as well as one of the country's nine colonial colleges.[6] After the revolutionary war, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College  charter placed the institution under a private board of trustees before it was further renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights occupying land of . Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree.

The University is organized into twenty schools, including Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies. The University also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Nairobi.It has affiliation with several other institutions nearby, including Teachers College, Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Sciences Po Paris,and the Juilliard School.

Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize.[Notable alumni and former students (including those from King's College) include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court; living billionaires;Academy Award winners;heads of state, including three United States PresidentsAdditionally,  Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with it as students, faculty, or staff.
Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as when Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college; however, not until the founding of Princeton University across the Hudson River in New Jersey did the City of New York seriously consider founding a college. an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In, the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery towards the foundation of a college

Classes were initially held in July and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson.. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan.The college was officially founded on October s King's College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United State

In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the College was an undergraduate of the class of Alexander Hamilton.e American Revolutionary War broke out in , and was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in  with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in  The college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and then British forces.Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, which was seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia University. The Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded what is now the University of King's Colle

The Gothic Revival Law School building on the Madison Avenue campus
After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, promising to make whatever changes to the school's charter the state might demand The Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May  it passed "an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called King's College.The Act created a Board of Regents to oversee the resuscitation of King's College, and, in an effort to demonstrate its support for the new Republic, the Legislature stipulated that "the College within the City of New York heretofore called King's College be forever hereafter called and known by the name of Columbia College,a reference to Columbia, an alternative name for America. The Regents finally became aware of the college's defective constitution in February and appointed a revision committee, which was headed by John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. In April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of