for over four decades, Columbia rapidly became the nation's major institution for research, setting the multiversity model that later universities would adopt. Prior to becoming the president of Columbia University, Butler founded Teachers College, as a school to prepare home economists and manual art teachers for the children of the poor, with philanthropist Grace Hoadley Dodge. Teachers College is currently affiliated as the university's Graduate School of Education.
=== 20th century ===
In the 1940s, faculty members, including John R. Dunning, I. I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi, and Polykarp Kusch, began what became the Manhattan Project, creating the first nuclear fission reactor in the Americas and researching gaseous diffusion.
In 1928, Seth Low Junior College was established by Columbia University in order to mitigate the number of Jewish applicants to Columbia College. The college was closed in 1936 due to the adverse effects of the Great Depression and its students were subsequently taught at Morningside Heights, …