Dates of Note - Recent Rankings

      On May 13, 1891, Massachusetts-born businessman William Marsh Rice chartered the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art as a gesture to the city of Houston, where he had made his fortune. The terms of the charter required that work on the new institute would begin only after Rice's death. However, unforeseen circumstances almost prevented its very founding.

      In 1896, William Marsh Rice's wife died, leaving a will which claimed half of Rice's estate. The claim was challenged, but while this process was moving through the court system, William Marsh Rice was murdered on September 23, 1900, by his valet, Charlie Jones. Jones had conspired with an unscrupulous lawyer, Albert Patrick, to kill Rice and claim his estate by using a forged will.

       When an autopsy ordered by Rice's attorney, Captain James A. Baker, revealed evidence of poisoning, Jones agreed to provide state's evidence against Patrick in return for immunity from prosecution. Patrick was convicted of murder and sent to Sing Sing in 1901 (although pardoned in 1912). Captain Baker's quick action and the favorable legal resolution in 1904 of the claim against Rice's estate cleared the way for the Institute to fulfill its charter's mandate.

      In 1907, acting upon the recommendation of Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, the trustees of The Rice Institute named astronomer and mathematician Edgar Odell Lovett the first president of Rice.

      Lovett's first initiative as president of Rice was to visit 78 major institutions of higher learning in the United States, Europe, and Asia in order to gather ideas for shaping the Institute and solicit recommendations for the faculty. Lovett called for the establishment of a university "of the highest grade." "We must keep the standards up and the numbers down," he declared. The university would place "no upper limit to its educational endeavor."

      The Rice Institute opened in 1912 with an inaugural student body of 77 (48 men, 29 women), 75 of whom hailed from Texas, and 10 faculty members. The opening was celebrated by an academic festival in October 1912 that was attended by distinguished scholars from around the world. At its first commencement, held in 1916, the Institute awarded 27 B.A.'s, 8 B.S.'s, and 1 M.A. It awarded its first Ph.D. in 1918.