Duke University is a prestigious private university located in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. It is named for the Duke family, which made its money in the tobacco and energy businesses (see American Tobacco Company and Duke Power). Although it is a young university, founded in 1924 (it traces its roots back to 1838), Duke is recognized as one of the leading institutions of higher education in the United States, and often competes for students with other such prestigious and highly-acclaimed institutions as Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, and Yale.