The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Hopkins or JHU, is a world-renowned private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, and China. Johns Hopkins has undergraduate programs in liberal arts and engineering; and graduate programs in medicine, public health, music, and international studies. The university is one of fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities.

The university is named after Johns Hopkins, who left $7 million in his 1873 will for the foundation of the university and Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the time, this was the largest philanthropic bequest in U.S. history, the equivalent of over $131 million in the year 2006. The university opened on February 22, 1876, with the stated goal of "The encouragement of research…and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell." Hopkins is one of the schools to have been a part of the 'top ten' club of US News & World Report.

Johns Hopkins was the first U.S. university to apply the German university model developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. Johns Hopkins was also the first U.S. university to teach through seminars, instead of solely through lectures, as well as the first university in the United States to offer an undergraduate major (as opposed to a purely liberal arts curriculum). As such, Johns Hopkins was a model for most large research universities in the United States, particularly the University of Chicago. According to the National Science Foundation ranking, Johns Hopkins performed $1.55 billion in science, medical and engineering research in fiscal year 2007. NSF ranked the university first among 20 U.S. academic institutions in total Research & Development spending for the 29th year in a row.