Marks of Distinction Twenty-nine Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cornell as faculty members or The 2005–06 Cornell faculty included 3 Nobel laureates， a Crafoord Prize winner， 2 Turing Award winners， a Fields Medal winner， 2 Legion of Honor recipients， a World Food Prize winner， an Andrei Sakharov Prize winner， 3 National Medal of Science winners， 2 Wolf Prize winners， 5 MacArthur award winners， 4 Pulitzer Prize winners， 2 Eminent Ecologist Award recipients， a Carter G Woodson Scholars Medallion recipient， 4 Presidential Early Career Award winners， 20 National Science Foundation CAREER grant holders， a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research， a recipient of the American Mathematical Society's Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement， a recipient of the Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics， 3 Packard Foundation grant holders， a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar， 2 Beckman Foundation Young Investigator grant holders， and 2 NYSTAR (New York State Office of Science， Technology and Academic Research) early career award Statistics OverviewFounded 1865 By Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson W Opened 1868 Morrill Hall was the first building constructed on the main Ithaca campus， which today includes more than 260 major buildings on 745 Identity Public and private Cornell is the federal land-grant institution of New York State， a private endowed university， a member of the Ivy League， and a partner of the State University of New Y It has been described as "the first American university" because of its founders' revolutionarily egalitarian and practical vision of higher education， and is dedicated to its land-grant mission of outreach and public Colleges and schools 14 Seven undergraduate units and four graduate and professional units in Ithaca， two medical graduate and professional units in New York City， and one in Doha， Q
