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Many of the stalwarts of the Renaissance period in Europe belonged to these institutions and some of the masterpieces of art produced in that era were actually an offshoot of the great traditions that went on and defined the unique identities of these places. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that the stage for the onset of industrial Revolution was already set far before by the great minds that passed out of the gates of these institutions. Today, in this networked world we live in, the most amazing inventions, the path breaking new discoveries and generation of knowledge that is talking place is still largely concentrated in these great universities and without their presence our civilization would not have reached this stage. Here we just give a glimpse of some of these monumental educational institutions in the world and what has made them what they are.

The very first in the list is the Harvard University. The institutions was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after its first principal donor, a young clergy man named John Harvard who bequeathed about four hundred books in will to form the basis of the college library collection, along with half his personal wealth worth several hundred pounds. It is the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States and one of the members of the Lvy League. A faculty of about 2,400 professors serves about 6,700 undergraduate and 12,400 graduate students. Harvard today has nine faculties imparting higher education in the fields of Applied Sciences & Engineering, Business, Arts, Medicine, Law and Design. The Harvard University Library System, comprising of over 90 individual libraries and over 15 million volumes, is the fourth largest library collection in the world, after the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the French Bibliotheque Nationale. The Harvard alumni till date include 75 Nobel Laureates, 15 Pulitzer Prize winners and 29 Mc-Arthur fellows. Some of its most famous alumni include John F. Kennedy, Theodre Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Jack Lemmon, T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings and many more in various fields. The University got a total endowment of $29. 1 billion in 2006, largest for any university in the world. Just Behind Harvard is Cambridge University in UK with 31 affiliated colleges and more than 100 departments imparting education in fields like sciences, arts, music, literature, and business. It was officially founded in 1209 A.D. and has since developed over the years as one of the more than 60 Nobel Laureates, and its contribution to the world has ranged from the discovery of the mechanism of blood circulation to the structure of DNA. University of Cambridge is especially known for producing prominent scientists and mathematicians. This distinguished list includes Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, William Harvey, Paul Dirac, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, Jane Gooddall, James Clerk Maxwell, John Milton, Francis Crick, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Fred Sanger, Jawaharlal Nehru, Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh.