Founded in , Johns Hopkins was the first American university based on the European research institution model. The university was named for its first benefactor, the American entrepreneur and Quaker philanthropist Johns Hopkins. While its primary campus is in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins also maintains ten divisions on campuses in other Maryland locations, including Laurel , Rockville , Columbia , Aberdeen , California , Elkridge , and Owings Mills. Founded in , the Blue Jays men's lacrosse team, which is an affiliate member in the Big Ten Conference , has won 44 national titles.
At the time, this donation, generated primarily from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad , [ 27 ] was the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the United States, [ 14 ] and endowment was then the largest in America. The first name of philanthropist Johns Hopkins comes from the surname of his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who married Gerard Hopkins.
Samuel named one of his sons for his father, and that son became the university's benefactor. Milton Eisenhower , a former university president, once spoke at a convention in Pittsburgh where the master of ceremonies introduced him as "President of John Hopkins". Eisenhower retorted that he was "glad to be here in Pitt burgh". The original board opted for an entirely novel university model dedicated to the discovery of knowledge at an advanced level, extending that of contemporary Germany.
It was especially Heidelberg University and its long academic research history on which the new institution tried to model itself. Angell of University of Michigan. They each supported Daniel Coit Gilman to lead the new university and he became the university's first president. Gilman launched what many at the time considered an audacious and unprecedented academic experiment to merge teaching and research.
He dismissed the idea that the two were mutually exclusive: "The best teachers are usually those who are free, competent and willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory," he stated. Morris; [ 35 ] the economist Richard T. Ely ; and the chemist Ira Remsen , who became the second president of the university in Gilman focused on the expansion of graduate education and support of faculty research.
