Perhaps you knew that John F. Kennedy was a graduate student at Stanford for one quarter in 1940, lived in a cottage off Mayfield Avenue and enlisted in the Navy while he was on campus. Or maybe you didn’t.
That little tidbit is one of hundreds of vignettes in a new Stanford history book that covers everything from paradigm-shifting innovations to goofball curiosities.
Published by the Stanford Historical Society, A Chronology of Stanford University and Its Founders offers 157 pages of Farm facts arranged decade by decade. It begins with the birth of Leland Stanford in upstate New York in 1824 and concludes with the death of Hewlett-Packard co-founder William Hewlett in January 2001. In between, readers will learn about the attempt by President Donald B. Tresidder in 1945 to have the United Nations located at Stanford; the world’s first computer-dating project, part of a programming course assignment in 1959; and track coach Payton Jordan’s revolutionary method of passing a baton, which helped the Stanford 440-yard relay team set a world record in 1965 and has been imitated ever since.
“The book commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Stanford Historical Society,” says Karen Bartholomew, ’71, one of three co-authors, along with Claude Brinegar, ’50, MS ’51, and Roxanne Nilan, ’92, PhD ’99. “We tried to catch the flavor of each of the University’s decades. The demonstration era of the 1960s and 1970s is covered in extra detail because we wanted to get across what a ‘war zone’ the campus really was. On the other hand, we added occasional lighthearted items such as the computer dating because they reveal the spirit of Stanford.”
The book is on sale at the Stanford Bookstore.
