Rice University (often referred to as Rice) is a private research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. The university is situated on a 300-acre (121 ha) campus near the Houston Museum District and is adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Founded in 1912 after the death of its founder, William Marsh Rice, Rice is now a research-intensive university with an undergraduate focus. Its graduate programs are highly selective. For 2018–2019, 11 National Academy of Sciences members were affiliated with the university as alumni or faculty.
Rice has been cited as one of 17 flagship universities in the United States by Council for Higher Education Accreditation. As of 2018–19, 15 Nobel laureates have been associated with Rice as alumni, faculty or researchers—including eight who have won Nobel Prizes in Physics: Richard Feynman (1965), Frederick Reines (1995), John Cramer (2002), Robert Curl Jr. (1996), Harold Kroto (1996), Roy Glauber (2005), Dudley Herschbach (1986) and James Peebles(2019). In addition, 36 Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences have been affiliated with the university as alumni or faculty.
The university was founded in 1912 after William Marsh Rice’s death and donated $4 million ($110 million today) to establish The Rice Institute, now known as Rice University. He had already planned for the institute’s establishment on land he owned at Montrose and Greenbriar streets in Houston’s Main Street District; however, upon his untimely death just two months before it was scheduled to open, Mrs. Edgar Odell Lovett assumed responsibility for carrying out her husband’s vision for what she hoped would be “a perfect institute of higher learning.” The charter stipulated that only white students would be enrolled and that men and women would be admitted equally. Lovett oversaw construction of eleven main buildings on over 200 acres (.81 km2), including academic buildings housing classrooms, laboratories, offices; residential colleges providing housing and dining facilities; athletic facilities including a stadium; an administrative building which housed offices for deans and other staff; a library; an auditorium; an infirmary; power plant facilities providing water service to all buildings via an extensive underground tunnel system connecting them all together underneath campus grounds..