Sept. 17, 1838
Classes at Emory College began for 15 students. Nearly two years earlier, the Georgia General Assembly granted the Georgia Methodist Conference a charter to establish a college named for John Emory, a popular bishop who had been killed in a carriage accident.
1852
Work began on a main building, which provided space for a library, auditorium and classes, at Emory's original campus in the town of Oxford. Emory later moved to its current campus in the Druid Hills area of Atlanta.
1888
Warren Akin Candler, an Emory-educated Methodist minister and former assistant editor of the Nashville-based Christian Advocate, became Emory's 10th president. Candler persuaded the state Legislature to admit graduates of Emory's law program to the Georgia Bar.
1899
Warren Candler's brother, Asa Candler, who had purchased the formula for Coca-Cola in 1888 and begun to market the soft drink in 1890, was elected to the Emory Board of Trustees. He became a generous patron of Emory.
1908
A freshman named Robert Winship Woodruff attended Emory College but left before his first term was over, complaining to his father that his eyes ached from studying. Woodruff later became Emory University's most generous benefactor.
1915
On Jan. 25, a DeKalb County judge granted a charter to Emory University. Emory joined the law school, theology school and the pre-clinical program of the medical school at the Druid Hills campus in 1919, the same year the graduate and business administration schools were founded.
1965
A group of young theologians, including Thomas Altizer, an associate professor of Bible and religion at Emory, claimed God is dead in a Time magazine article that led to an international controversy. President Sanford Atwood stood by Altizer in defense of academic freedom.
1979
Emory received about $105 million from the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Fund. This endowment, given by the university's longtime benefactors, Robert W. Woodruff and his brother, George W. Woodruff, was the largest single gift given to an educational institution in the nation's history.
1991
The Emory University System of Health Care was established. The system was incorporated in 1994 and renamed Emory Healthcare in 1995.
1994
A $10 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation resulted in a name change for Emory's business school to the Roberto C. Goizueta Business School, honoring Coca-Cola Co.'s CEO. That year, the Carter Center also formalized an agreement to become a separately chartered, independently governed unit of Emory.
1998
The Dalai Lama spoke at the university's commencement. He also signed an agreement to establish an Emory program in Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile.
2003
James Wagner, a biomedical engineer and provost of Case-Western Reserve University, was appointed Emory's 19th president.
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