Purdue University

On July 2, 1862, Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry signed the Morrill Act, which granted public lands to any state that agreed to use the proceeds of the land sales to maintain a college teaching “agriculture and the mechanic arts.”⁠[1][2][3]

In 1865 the Indiana General Assembly voted to join the Morrill Act plan, formally accepted the land grant and began the steps to establish an institution; that year it gave legal status to the Indiana Agricultural College.⁠[1][3][4]

In 1869 the legislature chose the Lafayette area for the school, accepted $150,000 from John Purdue, $50,000 from Tippecanoe County and 100 acres from local residents, and named the new school Purdue University. That is the account of the university’s history page; a 2023 Purdue Extension article writes that John Purdue contributed $150,000 and 100 acres of land, that in 1869 the legislature accepted an offer made by John Purdue and other Tippecanoe County residents, and that the new institution was named Purdue University in honor of the benefactor.⁠[1][3]

John Purdue was born in PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry in 1802, the only son among 10 children. He taught school in OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry for four years and then went into business, running a wholesale and retail dry-goods and grocery business in Lafayette, Indiana, for more than 25 years; in the 1850s he also operated a “commission house” in New York City with a partner, and he founded the newspaper The Lafayette Journal, a major source of his wealth. His gift was made to secure a location near Lafayette for the college, and the $50,000 from citizens of Tippecanoe County had been given in lands and buildings. He required that the institution bear his name and teach agriculture and the “mechanic arts.”⁠[4]

Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry states that the university was founded under the Morrill Act and calls John Purdue its major founding donor.⁠[5]

Ground was broken for the first campus buildings in 1871. In 1872 Richard Owen, a professor at Indiana University, became Purdue University’s first president; when he took office there were no buildings, faculty or students on the West Lafayette campus, and he never occupied an office there. The university credits him with turning the Morrill Act’s idea of an “Indiana Agricultural College” into reality; he resigned the day before the first class met.⁠[1][6]

The first campus buildings, the Boiler and Gas House, Military Hall and Gymnasium, Ladies Hall, Purdue Hall and the Pharmacy Building, were all completed by 1874, and none of them remain. On September 16, 1874, under Abram C. Shortridge, the first students matriculated: 39 applicants were admitted, some of them conditionally, and classes began with six instructors and 39 students.⁠[1][6][2]

The first women students enrolled in the fall after the first students matriculated. Abram C. Shortridge’s administration lasted just 18 months because of his failing health. In 1875 John Bradford Harper earned the first Purdue University degree.⁠[6][1]

John Purdue died in 1876 at age 73 and, at his request, was buried on campus across from University Hall. University Hall (the Main Building) was completed in 1877 and is the oldest building on campus; the first telephone was installed on campus in 1879.⁠[4][1]

The third president, Emerson E. White (1876–1883), set Purdue on its focus on agriculture and the “mechanic arts” under the Morrill Act; a failed attempt to ban fraternities led to his resignation in 1883.⁠[6]

The fourth president, James H. Smart (1883–1900), a self-educated New Englander, was known as “the engineers’ president.” During his tenure the schools of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering and the school of pharmacy and pharmacal sciences were established.⁠[6]

The university’s history page records that the Big Ten Conference was established in 1895 under President James Smart, and that the first Purdue PhD was awarded in 1897, in agriculture.⁠[1]

The College of Engineering’s history page records David Robert Lewis (BSCE 1894) as Purdue’s first African American engineering graduate, and Martha Dick Stevens (BSCE 1897, MS 1898) as its first female engineering graduate.⁠[2]

The fifth president, Winthrop E. Stone (1900–1921), had been a chemistry professor and the university’s first vice president. In 1913 he appointed Carolyn E. Shoemaker as Purdue’s first dean of women, and the schools of agriculture and engineering grew rapidly during his tenure. He died in a mountain-climbing accident in Canada in 1921.⁠[6]

The Purdue Alumni Association was formed in 1912. The College of Engineering’s history page records that 67 Purdue men died in uniform in World War I, at least 37 of them from the flu.⁠[1][2]

Edward C. Elliott was president from 1922 to 1945 and led the university through the Depression and World War II. He oversaw a major building program, including Ross-Ade Stadium, the Purdue Memorial Union and the Purdue University Airport, and established the Graduate School, the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Purdue Research Foundation; the Elliott Hall of Music is named for him.⁠[6]

In 1922 the radio station WBAA was licensed as the first radio station in Indiana. The Purdue Memorial Union and Ross-Ade Stadium opened in 1924, and the Graduate School was officially established in 1929.⁠[1]

The Purdue Research Foundation was incorporated in 1930. David E. Ross envisioned a nonprofit foundation that could make contacts with industry; he and Josiah K. Lilly each provided $25,000 in starter money, and President Edward C. Elliott and the Purdue Board of Trustees filed its Articles of Incorporation on December 30, 1930. David Ross, an 1893 mechanical engineering graduate with about 88 patents, founded Ross Gear and Tool Co., became a Purdue trustee and benefactor, and was behind the creation of the Purdue Research Foundation.⁠[7][1][8]

The Purdue University Airport opened for operations in September 1934, becoming the first university-owned airport in the nation.⁠[2][1]

In September 1934 Amelia Earhart met President Edward Elliott at a New York Herald Tribune conference, and he then invited her to Purdue. She served as a career counselor for women and an adviser to the aeronautical engineering department, with access to the university’s airport, and on November 26, 1935, she gave the keynote at Purdue’s first “Conference on Women’s Work and Opportunities.” She worked at Purdue from 1935 until her disappearance in 1937.⁠[9][2]

The Purdue Research Foundation established the Amelia Earhart Fund for Aeronautical Research, and in 1936 Earhart acquired a Lockheed Electra 10E from the fund for “just over $40,000.” After her disappearance George Palmer Putnam offered her papers and artifacts to Purdue, and the bulk of the collection came to Purdue in 1940; in 2002 Putnam’s granddaughter Sally Putnam Chapman gave an additional 492 items, and the collection holds nearly 5,000 items.⁠[9]

In 1935 Lillian Gilbreth, a pioneer of motion study, joined the faculty as the College of Engineering’s first female professor; she retired in 1948. She and her husband, Frank Gilbreth, raised 12 children, a family featured in “Cheaper by the Dozen.”⁠[8][2]

The physics department’s history records that the Van de Graaff accelerator completed in 1937 produced a 250 keV neutron beam that was not strong enough for neutron diffraction studies, and that the cyclotron was completed in August 1938 and by December was producing about 3 microamps of 8.3 MeV deuterons. After the discovery of uranium fission in Germany in 1939, the Van de Graaff was used to study fission fragments. In June 1941 six graduate students received PhDs for research that depended on the cyclotron; in August 1941 the new physics building was ready for occupancy, and dismantling and moving the cyclotron took about a year; on June 19–20, 1942, the building was dedicated as the Charles Benedict Stuart Laboratory for Applied Physics.⁠[10]

On January 24, 1942, Karl Lark-Horovitz, head of the physics department, proposed a crystal detector research program to the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It received its charter from Massachusetts in 1861, admitted its first students in 1865 and moved from Boston to its present campus in 1916. As of October 2025 it had 11,816 students, and it counts 106 Nobel laureates among members of its community.Open the full entry. In March 1942 the project received a research grant from the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and the work shifted early from silicon and galena to germanium. The crystal detector contract, OEMSR-362, ran from March 1, 1942, to February 28, 1943, with a value of $11,600.⁠[10][11]

Seymour Benzer found a method for producing germanium crystal rectifiers that could withstand reverse voltages above 100 volts, solving the “burnout” problem, and in October 1943 high back-voltage rectifiers reaching about 150 volts were presented at a Radiation Laboratory meeting. Purdue patented the device and split the royalties between the university and the inventors. The department’s history also states that a germanium crystal made at Purdue was later used for the first transistor built at Bell Laboratories. In the fall of 1945 the group stopped detector development to concentrate on basic germanium research, and the Purdue semiconductor work was declassified late in 1945.⁠[11][10]

In 1942–1943 the physics department measured the cross sections of the D-T and He3-D reactions for the Los Alamos project; the reports were classified, the particles were given code numbers, and the D-T peak was 2.8 barns. The department’s history records that the “barn” unit was named during a dinner at the Purdue Memorial Union in December 1942. In late fall 1943 nearly two-thirds of the faculty and graduate students engaged in nuclear research at Purdue left the university; only later was it known that they had gone to Los Alamos; Harry Daghlian, a physics graduate student, later died at Los Alamos in a radiation accident.⁠[10][11]

The College of Engineering’s history page records that about 17,500 Boilermakers served in World War II and that more than 500 died.⁠[2]

Frederick L. Hovde became president in January 1946 at age 37 and served for 25 years, the longest tenure of any Purdue president. Enrollment grew “from 5,628 to 25,582 students” and the annual budget rose from $12.7 million to $136 million; the schools of industrial engineering, materials engineering, technology and veterinary medicine were established. In 1975 the Purdue Executive Building was renamed the Frederick L. Hovde Hall of Administration.⁠[6][2]

The Bachelor of Arts degree was first offered in 1959. The School of Nuclear Engineering emerged in 1960, and its reactor, PUR-1, followed in 1962. In 1967 the Boilermakers made their first Rose Bowl appearance, defeating the USCUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry Trojans 14–13.⁠[1][2]

In 1969 the Purdue Women in Engineering Program was established, the first of its kind in the nation. On July 20, 1969, alumnus Neil ArmstrongNeil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong (1930–2012) was an American astronaut. On July 20, 1969, as commander of the Apollo 11 mission, he became the first person to set foot on the Moon.Open the full entry became the first person to walk on the Moon, and on July 21 Indiana and the university recognized “Apollo 11 Day.”⁠[2]

The eighth president, Arthur G. Hansen (1971–1982), was the first Purdue president who was also an alumnus, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (1946) and a master’s degree in mathematics (1948) from Purdue; he had led Georgia Tech for two years before arriving. Enrollment rose to more than 32,000, new buildings were completed for agriculture, psychology, life sciences and athletics, and he supported the creation of Purdue’s first Black Cultural Center. He left in 1982 to become chancellor of the Texas A&M system.⁠[6]

In 1979 chemistry professor Herbert C. Brown won the Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry in Chemistry for his work on boron compounds. He had joined Purdue in 1947 and retired in 1979; his boron chemistry includes hydroboration, and he mentored Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki.⁠[1][8]

The ninth president, Steven C. Beering (1983–2000), the second president with a medical degree, had been dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine and director of the IU Medical Center for 10 years. Enrollment and scholarships set records, and more than 20 new buildings were built and 13 expanded or renovated, including the Steven C. Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, a $32 million power plant expansion and Hillenbrand Hall; private gifts grew more than fourfold to $90 million a year, the endowment exceeded $1.3 billion, and sponsored research support grew to more than $130 million a year.⁠[6]

In 1988 the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest went national; in 1989 the Class of 1939 Water Sculpture was dedicated at the center of Purdue Mall; in 1990 the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall opened for classes; in 1992 a brick smokestack was razed and plans were made for the Purdue Bell Tower, which was built in 1995 using the bells of the second Heavilon Hall.⁠[1]

The 10th president, Martin C. Jischke, took office in August 2000 after nine years as president of Iowa State University, and earlier 17 years at the University of OklahomaUniversity of OklahomaThe University of Oklahoma (OU) is the flagship public research university of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It was created by the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature in 1890, 17 years before statehood; its main campus is in Norman, Oklahoma, with a health campus in Oklahoma City and a campus in Tulsa. It holds the Research 1 (R1) designation in the Carnegie Classification, its academic health system OU Health is the state’s leading academic health system, and its athletic teams, the Sooners, have competed in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) since 2024.Open the full entry and five years at the University of Missouri-Rolla; he held a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led a five-year strategic plan and a capital campaign that raised more than $1.7 billion, “unprecedented for a public institution in Indiana”; more than 50 capital projects were completed, including 43 new buildings; need-based scholarships were created for one student from each of Indiana’s 92 counties, and the Science Bound Program was started for eligible Indianapolis students.⁠[6]

Discovery Park at Purdue was founded in 2001; the university credits Jischke with creating the $300 million Discovery Park with 10 primary centers. In 2005 the Birck Nanotechnology Center was built in the Discovery Park District and the Boilermaker statue was dedicated, and in 2007 the Neil Armstrong statue was unveiled.⁠[1][6][12]

The 11th president, France A. Córdova (2007–2012), was the first woman to hold the office. An astrophysicist, she was co-principal investigator on a telescope experiment flying on the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, published more than 200 scientific and public policy articles, reports and abstracts, served as NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry chief scientist from 1993 to 1996, and had held posts at the University of California, Riverside, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Pennsylvania State University; she earned a B.A. in English cum laude from Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. Her tenure saw record research funding, reputational rankings and student retention rates, more than $1 billion raised in private philanthropy and an expanded global research role for Purdue.⁠[6]

The Unfinished Block P sculpture was dedicated in 2008, and in 2009 a life-size statue of Amelia Earhart was unveiled outside the residence hall named for her.⁠[1][9]

In 2010 Professor Ei-ichi Negishi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling. He had joined Purdue in 1979 and in 1999 was named the inaugural Herbert C. Brown Distinguished Professor.⁠[1][8]

The 12th president, Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., took office in January 2013 after his second term as governor of Indiana and served until 2022. He had been a senior advisor to President Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Reagan (1911–2004) was an American politician and actor who worked as a radio sports announcer and film actor before serving as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.Open the full entry, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge W. Bush (born 1946) is an American politician and Republican who worked in the energy business and was a part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before becoming the 46th governor of Texas in 1995 and serving as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009.Open the full entry, and spent 11 years at Eli Lilly and CompanyEli Lilly and CompanyEli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) is a U.S. pharmaceutical company founded in 1876 by Colonel Eli Lilly and headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.Open the full entry, including as president of its North American pharmaceutical operations; he holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry’s Woodrow Wilson School and a law degree from Georgetown, has written three books and is a contributing columnist for The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is an American daily newspaper founded in Washington in 1877, known for its role in the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation. Run by the Meyer–Graham family for eighty years from 1933, it has been owned personally by Jeff Bezos since 2013.Open the full entry. He was named to Fortune’s Top 50 World Leaders in 2015 and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.⁠[6]

In 2013 Daniels unveiled the Purdue Moves initiatives. The university’s page on past presidents records that he ended a 36-year run of tuition increases with tuition freezes starting in 2013 and cut room and board costs by 5%, saving students and families more than $1 billion collectively; the 2025 enrollment release states that main-campus tuition has been frozen for 14 consecutive years, since 2012–13. The Ever True campaign raised more than $2.5 billion, the annual Purdue Day of Giving was launched, Purdue Global and the Purdue Polytechnic High Schools were created, more than $500 million in facility improvements were completed, and he championed the Discovery Park District.⁠[1][6][13]

Under Daniels Purdue adopted the Chicago Principles on free speech, the first public university in the United States to do so, and in 2014 its international student enrollment became the highest among U.S. public universities. During the COVID-19 pandemic the university committed to in-person classes in fall 2020 under the Protect Purdue Plan. Daniels retired in December 2022.⁠[6][1][14]

The new institution was first announced in April 2017. On March 5, 2018, the Higher Learning Commission approved the change of control application; the institution had previously received regulatory approvals from the U.S. Department of Education and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. The transaction closed on March 22, 2018, with Purdue Global acquiring Kaplan University’s assets and operations from Kaplan Higher Education (KHE) for $1; under a long-term operations support agreement KHE provides Purdue Global with back-office services such as technology support, human resources and facilities management. Kaplan is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company.⁠[15]

Purdue Global, Indiana’s newest public institution of higher education, had its main campus in Indianapolis and was expected to launch officially on April 2. About 30,000 Kaplan University students transitioned to it and could finish their programs with their current instructors and earn a degree bearing the new name, and about 2,100 employees and 14 campuses and learning centers transferred. Betty Vandenbosch, formerly president of Kaplan University, became chancellor, reporting to Purdue University President Mitch Daniels and a six-member board of trustees (five Purdue trustees and one external trustee).⁠[15]

On June 10, 2022, the Purdue Board of Trustees unanimously elected Mung Chiang as the university’s next president, succeeding Mitch Daniels, who had served since January 2013, effective January 1, 2023. Chiang holds a B.S. (Hons.) in electrical engineering and mathematics and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University; he had been the Arthur LeGrand Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University and the first chairman of Princeton’s Entrepreneurial Council, spent five years at Purdue as John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering and Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, spent 2020 as scientific and technology adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, and received the 2013 Alan T. Waterman Award.⁠[16]

Mung Chiang became Purdue University’s 13th president on January 1, 2023. WFYI Public Media writes that he had joined the university in 2017 after 14 years at Princeton University, that he was 45 when he took over, and that he was the university’s first Asian president.⁠[17][18]

On February 3, 2023, the Board of Trustees approved naming the business school the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business after the 12th president, the school’s first formal name, and committed to keeping the Krannert name for the graduate and executive degree programs within the Daniels School. Purdue planned to invest at least $100 million in the relaunch and to raise $200 million from donors, growing undergraduate enrollment, doubling graduate enrollment and significantly expanding the facility; the release notes that enrollment had risen 33% since 2019 and that a $10 million gift from Marshall and Susan Larsen supports the Larsen Leaders Academy.⁠[14]

In fiscal year 2023 Purdue reached a record $613 million in external research funding.⁠[1]

On April 3, 2024, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced that South Korea-based SK hynixSK hynixSK hynix is a South Korean memory semiconductor company headquartered in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, that makes DRAM, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and NAND flash; its shares trade on the Korea Exchange. It began in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, was later renamed Hynix Semiconductor and joined SK Group in 2012. In the third quarter of 2026 its quarterly revenue exceeded 100 trillion won for the first time.Open the full entry, the world’s leading producer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, planned an initial investment of more than $3.87 billion in a roughly 430,000-square-foot advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility on 90 acres at Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, with an option to expand onto another 30 acres, to mass-produce next-generation HBM chips for AI and GPU applications and develop future chips. SK hynix was to collaborate on advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration research with Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center and other partners, and on training programs and interdisciplinary degree curricula with Purdue and Ivy Tech Community College; the Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered performance-based incentives, including up to $554.7 million in tax rebates.⁠[19]

Purdue’s president called it the largest investment ever in Indiana, and a Purdue video speaks of “more than 1,000 new employment opportunities in Greater Lafayette”; the state’s release cites up to 800 new high-wage jobs by the end of 2030.⁠[12][19]

Under an agreement approved by both universities’ boards of trustees, Indiana University and Purdue University separated their jointly run IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) into two independent campuses: IU’s existing Indianapolis campus became Indiana University Indianapolis and took most academic programs, while the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology and the computer science program in the School of Science went to Purdue University in Indianapolis, which the university called “the first comprehensive urban campus of Purdue University.” IU was to provide certain administrative services for both and run intercollegiate sports. Purdue planned a 28-acre campus footprint beyond the existing IUPUI Engineering & Technology buildings and a 65-mile “Hard Tech Corridor” from downtown Indianapolis to West Lafayette.⁠[20]

University officials held an inauguration celebration with city and state leaders on June 27, 2024, and on July 1 Purdue University in Indianapolis launched as a fully integrated extension of the West Lafayette campus, welcoming an inaugural class of more than 800 students. The opening release describes IUPUI as a 55-year collaboration between the two universities, while the 2023 agreement release speaks of IUPUI’s 53-year record of accomplishment. WFYI Public Media writes that Mung Chiang oversaw the separation.⁠[21][1][20][18]

On February 17, 2025, Purdue announced “Victories & Heroes: Your Campaign for Purdue,” a campaign to raise $4 billion over five years, by early 2030, the largest in the university’s history and its third campaign of more than $1 billion; Mung Chiang first shared it the preceding weekend at a Purdue for Life Foundation dinner in Naples, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry. Its priorities are growing the endowment around four strategic initiatives, the expansion in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and One Health, as well as sports and other areas; committed gifts included $30 million from Peter and Ann Lambertus for the College of Engineering and an anonymous $25 million for the School of Mechanical Engineering.⁠[22]

In fall 2025 total enrollment in the Purdue system was 106,649, which the university calls the largest university system in the state; this included 6,522 at Purdue University Northwest and 5,884 at Purdue University Fort Wayne (fall 2025, undergraduate, graduate and online), 36,449 at Purdue Global (September 2025), and more than 57,000 at the main campuses in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Applications for the fall 2025 undergraduate class reached 86,953, a record for the 14th consecutive year, with admission rates of 71% in state and 39% out of state; West Lafayette enrolled 8,914 new undergraduates and 3,189 new graduate students, and Indianapolis 666 new undergraduates and 30 new graduate students. The four-year graduation rate of 68.3% and six-year rate of 84.6% were the highest on record, and annual tuition was $9,992 for Indiana residents and $28,794 for out-of-state students.⁠[13]

The National Center for Education Statistics’ College Navigator lists 52,905 students at Purdue University-Main Campus in fall 2023, 39,864 undergraduates and 13,041 graduate students, with 3,068 full-time faculty and a student-to-faculty ratio of 14 to 1.⁠[23]

Research expenditures in fiscal year 2025 exceeded $1 billion, a first for Purdue, up 12% from the previous fiscal year and almost 40% over three years (from $763 million in fiscal year 2022); a record 60 master research agreements were active at the end of the fiscal year, and Eli Lilly and Company planned to invest up to $250 million over eight years in the Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative.⁠[24]

The audited financial report for fiscal year 2024–25 presented at the Board of Trustees’ December 2025 meeting shows total operating revenues of $2.679 billion (up 5.1% from $2.548 billion) and a total net position of $7.752 billion at June 30, 2025. The Purdue Research Foundation’s annual report states that funds under management by its Office of Investments, covering the combined Purdue University and foundation endowments together with trusts, annuities and retirement funds, totaled about $6.5 billion at June 30, 2025; in that fiscal year 267 patents were issued, including a record 190 U.S. patents, and 18 startups were founded on Purdue intellectual property.⁠[25][7]

In January 2026 the Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement calling for the immediate resignation of Provost Patrick J. Wolfe and for a vote of no confidence in him by the University Senate. Senate Document 25-19 was introduced in response at the Senate’s February 16 meeting, and between February 16 and March 9 the Senate’s standing committees were asked to look into the issues, concerns and allegations raised in the statement. A summary of their findings was added to the document and shared with senators for the March 23 meeting, and 70% of senators voted to hold a vote of no confidence at the April 20 meeting.⁠[26]

Senate Document 25-25, put to the vote on April 20, was submitted by Senators Howard Zelaznik and Lindsay Weinberg. It cited reports from six Senate standing committees, two college-level faculty surveys, ten one-on-one faculty meetings and nine emails, and listed concerns including delayed and adverse decision-making, limited transparency of information, a disconnect from faculty perspectives, weak conflict resolution and the handling of the College of Veterinary Medicine dean search; its resolution states that the University Senate “has lost confidence in Provost Patrick J. Wolfe’s leadership.” A planned Qualtrics ballot failed and the vote was held by Zoom poll; the resolution passed with 60 votes in favor, 21 against and 2 abstentions. The minutes record that, with abstentions removed, the 74.1% in favor surpassed the two-thirds majority required for approval.⁠[26][27]

On May 18, 2026, Mung Chiang announced that he would leave Purdue on July 1, 2026, to become president of Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university founded in 1851, with campuses in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, United States, and in Doha, Qatar.Open the full entry, after just over three years as Purdue’s president; a contract extension approved in fall 2025 had run through mid-2031, with $600,000 in base annual pay starting in 2026 plus $500,000 if he remained through June, and he had received nearly $169,000 in performance pay the previous year. Gary Lehman, chair of the Purdue trustees, said: “We will miss Mung and Kei and their positive influence on our campus and community.”⁠[18]

About a week after Chiang announced his departure, the trustees in May 2026 approved Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. as interim president; he began his second stint as Purdue’s president on July 1, 2026, on an interim basis, and the board was expected to launch a national search for a permanent president that summer; he also chairs the board of the Purdue Research Foundation. Governor Mike Braun reappointed Theresa Carter, Michael Klipsch and Gary Lehman to the 10-member board, with new terms running through June 2029.⁠[28]

On October 2, 2026, the Archaeological Legacy Institute, the Purdue Research Foundation and Purdue launched the Taraia Object expedition to determine whether a satellite-detected anomaly in a South Pacific lagoon is Amelia Earhart’s missing plane. Earlier, on September 28, 2026, Purdue Stories presented “Finding Amelia,” a podcast miniseries about the search from “This Is Purdue,” the official podcast of Purdue University.⁠[9][29]

As of November 2026 the university lists its colleges and schools as the College of Agriculture, the Daniels School of Business, the College of Education, the College of Engineering, Exploratory Studies, the College of Health and Human Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Pharmacy, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, the College of Science, the College of Veterinary Medicine and the John Martinson Honors College.⁠[30]

The university describes Purdue University West Lafayette as Indiana’s land-grant university, offering more than 200 undergraduate and more than 80 graduate programs, and Purdue University in Indianapolis as an extension of Purdue’s flagship campus. The Purdue system also includes Purdue University Fort Wayne, the largest university in northeastern Indiana; Purdue University Northwest, with campuses in Hammond and Westville near Chicago; the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, which offers programs in nine Indiana communities (Anderson, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Lafayette, New Albany, Richmond, South Bend and Vincennes); and Purdue Global, which offers more than 175 undergraduate and graduate programs for adult learners and which the university calls an accredited and affordable online option.⁠[31][13]

Encyclopaedia Britannica records that the Calumet campus in Hammond was established in 1946 and the North Central campus in Westville in 1948.⁠[5]

As of November 2026 the university’s About page lists more than 50,000 students in West Lafayette from more than 135 countries, more than 102,000 students enrolled worldwide, more than 600,000 alumni and more than 400 research labs. Encyclopaedia Britannica also notes professional degrees in pharmacy and veterinary medicine and a regional center of the Indiana University School of Medicine.⁠[32][5]

Old Gold and Black became the official colors in 1887. In 1890 Bruce Rogers created Purdue’s first seal, which was never officially recognized; in 1895 Abby Phelps Lytle designed the official seal, with a shield, a griffin and the Uncial typeface.⁠[1]

In 1891 the “Boilermakers” name was adopted amid accusations of recruiting athletes from boiler shops, and an 85,000-pound Schenectady No. 1 locomotive was purchased. The University Band was established in 1886, the Debris yearbook and the student newspaper The Exponent each published their first issue in 1889, the Varsity Glee Club was formed in 1894, the fight song “Hail Purdue” was written in 1912, and the Old Oaken Bucket football trophy was introduced in 1925. The Boilermaker Special mascot was presented to the student body at a convocation in 1940, and in 1944 the Debris first used the image of “Pete,” a barrel-chested, mallet-wielding boilermaker.⁠[1]

The traditions listed on the university’s About page also include the Big Bass Drum and the Grand Prix.⁠[32]

Neil Armstrong attended Purdue University, earning a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering in 1955. The College of Engineering calls Purdue the “Cradle of Astronauts”: 16 of its 22 astronaut alumni attended the dedication of the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, and on October 13, 2021, alumna Audrey Powers flew to space on Mission NS-18, becoming the 27th Purdue graduate to enter space. Encyclopaedia Britannica also lists astronaut Roger Chaffee, basketball coach John Wooden and playwright George Ade among notable alumni.⁠[33][2][5]

The university’s Inventors & Innovators page includes Edward Purcell, a 1933 electrical engineering graduate who measured nuclear resonance with magnetic fields and microwaves and shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics with Felix Bloch; Brian Lamb, a 1963 speech graduate who founded C-SPAN in 1977, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007 and gave his name to Purdue’s communication school in 2011; Ward Cunningham, an alumnus who wrote the first wiki application and began programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994; Elwood Mead, an 1884 graduate who was chief engineer for Hoover Dam and for whom Lake Mead is named; Orville Redenbacher, a 1928 agriculture graduate; Charles Alton Ellis, a civil engineering professor from 1934 to 1946 who helped design components of the Golden Gate Bridge; and Ruth Siems, a 1953 home economics graduate who masterminded Stove Top stuffing.⁠[8]

Firsts listed by the College of Engineering also include Ray Ewry (BSME 1894), who for 100 years held the record as the U.S. Olympian with the most individual gold medals (eight); Frederick C. Branch, who on November 10, 1945, became the first African American commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps; and Jennifer Weerts Rumsey, who in 2022 became Cummins’ first female CEO and in 2023 the first woman to chair the company.⁠[2]

Keith OlsonKeith OlsonKeith Olson is a nonprofit finance executive who has served at The Rockefeller Foundation since 2024, first as Chief Financial Officer; as of October 2026 his title is Chief Financial Administrative Officer. He previously served for more than a decade as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Council on Foreign Relations.Open the full entry completed Bachelor of Science degrees in economics and industrial management at Purdue University; on February 26, 2024, The Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation headquartered in New York City. It was chartered by New York State legislation in 1913 with funding from Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, with the mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” In its early years it funded global public health, medical education, and yellow fever vaccine research; in the mid-20th century it supported agricultural programs that came to be known as the “Green Revolution”; and in recent years it has focused its work on energy, health, food, and climate.Open the full entry named him its chief financial officer.⁠[34]

Prahasith VeluvoluPrahasith VeluvoluPrahasith Veluvolu is a software entrepreneur, the co-founder and CEO of Mimir, a platform for teaching computer science courses that HackerRank acquired in 2019; he was named a Thiel Fellow in 2017.Open the full entry, Jacobi Petrucciani and Colton Voege, co-founders of Mimir, were all former computer science students in Purdue’s College of Science; on January 3, 2017, the university announced that the three had been named to the education category of Forbes’ 2017 “30 Under 30” list. Prahasith Veluvolu was selected for the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry in 2017.⁠[35][36]

The physicist Dale D. HoppesDale D. HoppesDale D. Hoppes (born 1928) was a nuclear physicist at the National Bureau of Standards of the United States (later the National Institute of Standards and Technology), where he later led the Radioactivity Group. In 1956–1957, with Chien-Shiung Wu, Ernest Ambler, Raymond W. Hayward and Ralph P. Hudson, he carried out the cobalt-60 beta-decay experiment that showed parity is not conserved in weak interactions.Open the full entry received a B.S. from Purdue University in 1950 and from that year worked as a nuclear physicist at the National Bureau of Standards. Ralph P. HudsonRalph P. HudsonRalph P. Hudson (1924–2016) was a British-born American low-temperature physicist who joined the National Bureau of Standards in 1951, headed its Cryogenic Physics Section and then its Heat Division, and was one of the four bureau physicists who carried out the cobalt-60 parity experiment of 1956–1957 with Chien-Shiung Wu. From 1980 to 1989 he was Director of Publications at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in France and editor of the journal Metrologia.Open the full entry was a visiting lecturer in the Purdue Department of Physics in 1949 and 1950 and received an honorary Doctor of Science from Purdue in 2001. Wolfgang PauliWolfgang PauliWolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) was a Vienna-born theoretical physicist who received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the exclusion principle, also called the Pauli principle, and who in 1930 proposed the neutral particle later named the neutrino; he was professor of theoretical physics at ETH Zurich from 1928 until his death.Open the full entry was a visiting professor at Purdue University in 1942. After leaving the presidency, Benjamin HarrisonBenjamin HarrisonBenjamin Harrison (1833–1901) was an American lawyer, soldier, and Republican politician who represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate and served as the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893.Open the full entry served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University.⁠[37][38][39][40]

Purdue University: Official website: https://www.purdue.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

X: Public account: https://x.com/LifeAtPurdue (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/edu/purdue-university-18357 (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/purdueuniversity (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/lifeatpurdue/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/PurdueUniversity (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@purdueuniversity (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

SpotifySpotifySpotify is an audio streaming subscription service offering on-demand music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription. Its parent company, Spotify Technology S.A., is incorporated in Luxembourg, has its principal operations in Stockholm, Sweden, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker SPOT). It helped move the recorded-music business from buying and owning music to on-demand streaming and is one of the largest audio streaming subscription services by users.Open the full entry: Public show: https://open.spotify.com/show/1npQBIaTzFnCvDlzeiNV7j (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

Apple Podcasts: Public show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-purdue/id1496040232 (opens in a new window).⁠[29]