Duke University

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

Duke is often ranked as one of the world's top 25 universities, and similarly, is often ranked top 10 in the United States. The Wall Street Journal has also named Duke as the best university for graduate outcomes for several years in a row. Several faculty members, affiliates and alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prize in recent years. Notable examples since 2012 include Robert Lefkowitz, Brian Kobilka, Gregg L. Semenza, Paul Modrich, William Kaelin, and George Smith. In 2019, Clarivate Analytics named 54 members of Duke's faculty to its list of "Highly Cited Researchers". That number places Duke 8th among the world's universities.