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161 HarvardUniversity is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learn- ing in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America. Initially called “New College” or “the college at New Towne”, the in- stitution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after a young clergyman named John Harvard, who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779 (which was half of his estate). The earli- est known official reference to Harvard as a “university” occurs in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. During his 40-year tenure as Harvard president (1869–1909), Charles William Eliot radically transformed Harvard into the pattern of the modern research university. Eliot’s reforms included elective courses, small classes, and entrance examinations. The Harvard model influenced American educa- tion nationally. Harvard’s library collection contains more than 15 million volumes, making it the largest academic library in the United States, and the fourth among the five “mega-libraries” of the world (after the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the French Bibliothèque nationale, but ahead of the New York Public Library). Harvard is consistently ranked at or near the top of international college and university rankings, and has the largest financial endowment of any non-profit organization except for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, standing at $28.8 billion. A faculty of about 2,400 professors served in Harvard in 2006–2007, with 6,715 undergraduate and 12,424 graduate students. Students come from all parts of the USA and 100 countries abroad. The school colour is crimson, which is also the name of the Harvard sports teams and the daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson . Harvard has produced many famous alumni, along with a few infa- mous ones. Among the best-known are political leaders John Hancock, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, actors Jack Lemmon, Natalie Portman, and Tommy Lee Jones. Among its most famous current faculty members are biologists James D. Watson and E.O. Wilson, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, physicists Lisa Randall and Roy Glauber.