[12] Several notable individuals have served as trustees, including two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Ulysses S. Grant, and Alexander Graham Bell.

[18][19] Following his death, his desire was shared and encouraged by U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who both expressed the need to carry out Washington's plans.

On January 26, 1939, Niels Bohr announced that Otto Hahn had successfully split the atom at the Fifth Washington Conference on theoretical physics in the Hall of Government.

In July 2020, the university began forming special committees to look at possible name changes to an on-campus building and the school moniker.

The main GW campus consists of 43 acres (170,000 m2) in historic Foggy Bottom and is located a few blocks from the White House, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, State Department and the National Mall.

The National Security Archives (NSA) is a research institution that publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of American foreign policy.

It was a National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act request that eventually made the Central Intelligence Agency's so-called "Family Jewels" public.

In late 2007, construction began on a large mixed-use residential, office and retail development located on the site of the old GW Hospital (Square 54) and just east of the Foggy Bottom–GW Metrorail station.

The Virginia Science and Technology Campus hosts research and educational partnerships with industry and government officials and offers more than 20 graduate degrees.

The George Washington School of Business was established in 1928 with a $1 million gift by the Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Freemasonry Southern Jurisdiction.

[80] In 2010, the GW School of Nursing was re-established and is now the university's tenth academic institution, with Jean Johnson and Ellen Dawson as the founding deans.

[91] It is a year-long program open to first-year students at GWU that requires participating to live in Somers Hall on the Mount Vernon Campus.

[97] As of 2015[update], George Washington University no longer required the SAT and ACT test scores for applicants in order to boost the enrollment of disadvantaged students.

[103] According to self-provided data by George Washington University, as of the 2011–2012 academic year, the acceptance rate for the Medical School was 3%, receiving 10,588 applications.

[113] The Princeton Review consistently ranks George Washington University in the Top 10 for the following categories:[114] In 2012, the university received national attention when GW officials announced that they had misreported admissions data on their student body for over a decade, overstating the number of students who had graduated from high school in the top ten percent of their classes due to a "data reporting error".

[132] Foreign Policy ranks the Elliott School's Masters in International Affairs as the seventh best in the world in its 2018 "Inside the Ivory Tower" annual report.

The largest student organization on campus, the GW College Democrats have hosted speakers such as CNN contributor Donna Brazile and former DNC Chairman Howard Dean among many others.

Likewise, the GW College Republicans, the largest CR chapter in the nation, have been visited by politicians like John Ashcroft former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former President George W.

This organization also hosts various foreign dignitaries, US Government officials, and subject matter experts to further inform and foster international understanding both in the university's student body and the greater D.C. community.

EMeRG has been active on campus since 1994 and has advanced from bike response into a two-ambulance system that is sanctioned by the District of Columbia Department of Health and DC Fire and EMS (DCFEMS).

The local chapter of the Society of Physics Students was at one time under the auspices of world-renowned scientists like George Gamow, Ralph Asher Alpher, Mario Schoenberg and Edward Teller, who have all taught at the university.

In 1966, the football program was discontinued due to a lack of adequate facilities and the university's desire to develop an on-campus fieldhouse for basketball and other sports.

Examples include: boxing, basketball, volleyball, ice hockey, figure skating, fencing, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, triathlon, tennis, ultimate frisbee, cricket, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, water polo, equestrian, and others.

Former associate director for National Preparedness at the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), John Brinkerhoff was a GW alumni.

In business, Lee Kun-hee (MBA), Chairman of Samsung who is credited with transforming the company into one of the largest electronics manufacturers, Scott Kirby (MS), CEO of United Airlines, Kathy J.

Science and technology alumni include Julius Axelrod (PhD), Nobel Laureate and medical researcher, Ralph Asher Alpher, National Medal of Science laureate, physicist and "father" of the Big Bang theory, Jack Edmonds, noted computer scientist and mathematician and one of the creators of combinatorial optimization, Walter O. Snelling, who first identified propane and researched how propane could be liquefied and used as a viable energy resource, Charles Browne Fleet, inventor of ChapStick.

Journalism alumni include Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald, CNN commentators Dana Bash and Chuck Todd, as well as NBC News reporter Kasie Hunt.

Other notable athletes include WNBA star Jonquel Jones, Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Tuffy Leemans, and Olympic medalist Elena Myers.

Notable GW faculty include Tom Perez, former Chair of the Democratic National Committee; two current Supreme Court Justices, Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson; George Gamow, developer of the Big Bang theory; Edward Teller, "father of the hydrogen bomb"; Vincent du Vigneaud, Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner; John Negroponte, first Director of National Intelligence; Thomas Buergenthal, former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; Masatoshi Koshiba, Nobel Prize in Physics winner; Scott Pace, current Executive Secretary of the National Space Council; Amitai Etzioni, former President of the American Sociological Association; Marshall Warren Nirenberg, Nobel Prize in Medicine winner; Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner; Abba Eban, former Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly; Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary; and Ferid Murad, Nobel Prize in Medicine winner.

Other faculty have included Frank Sesno, CNN former Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief and Special Correspondent; James Carafano, Heritage Foundation national security and homeland security expert; Leon Fuerth, former national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore; James Rosenau, political theorist and former president of the International Studies Association; Steven V. Roberts, American journalist, writer and political commentator and former senior writer at U.S. News & World Report; Nancy E. Gary, former dean of Albany Medical College, Executive Vice President of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Dean of its F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Roy Richard Grinker, anthropologist specializing in autism and North-South Korean relations, Edward P. Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2004, novelist Herman "H.G."