The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world and it is among the most selective in the United States.
The university is composed of an undergraduate college and five graduate research divisions, which contain all of the university’s graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees. Chicago has eight professional schools: the Law School, the Booth School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Divinity School, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downtown Chicago.
University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of many academic disciplines, including economics, law, literary criticism, mathematics, physics, religion, sociology, and political science, establishing the Chicago schools in various fields.Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory produced the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction in Chicago Pile-1 beneath the viewing stands of the university’s Stagg Field.[25] Advances in chemistry led to the „radiocarbon revolution“ in the carbon-14 dating of ancient life and objects.[26] The university research efforts include administration of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.[27]
The University of Chicago’s students, faculty, and staff include 94 Nobel laureates, among the highest of any university in the world.[28] The university’s faculty members and alumni also include 10 Fields Medalists,[29] 4 Turing Award winners, 52 MacArthur Fellows,[30] 26 Marshall Scholars,[31] 53 Rhodes Scholars,[32] 27 Pulitzer Prize winners,[33] 20 National Humanities Medalists,[34] 29 living billionaire graduates,[35] and eight Olympic medalists.
Notable faculty in economics include Friedrich Hayek, Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, James Heckman, Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Robert Lucas, Jr., John List, and Eugene Fama. Additionally, the John Bates Clark Medal, which is rewarded annually to the best economist under the age of 40, has also been awarded to 4 current members of the university faculty.
Notable faculty in physics have included the speed of light calculator A. A. Michelson, elementary charge calculator Robert A. Millikan, discoverer of the Compton Effect Arthur H. Compton, the creator of the first nuclear reactor Enrico Fermi, „the father of the hydrogen bomb“ Edward Teller, „one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century“ Luis Walter Alvarez, Murray Gell-Mann who introduced the quark, second female Nobel laureate Maria Goeppert-Mayer, the youngest American winner of the Nobel Prize Tsung-Dao Lee, and astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
In law, former U.S. president Barack Obama, the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century Richard Posner, Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan, Antonin Scalia, and John Paul Stevens, and Nobel laureate in economics Ronald Coase have served on the faculty. Other distinguished scholars who have served on the faculty include Karl Llewellyn, Edward Levi, and Cass Sunstein.
Philosophers who were members of the faculty include Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell, John Dewey (central figure in pragmatism and founder of functional psychology), philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, George H. Mead (who is considered one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition), and Leo Strauss (prominent philosopher and the founder of the Straussian School in philosophy). Notable writers T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, and J.M. Coetzee have all served on the faculty.