McMaster University (commonly referred as McMaster or Mac) is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on 300 acres (1.2 km) of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens. The university operates six academic faculties: Engineering, Health Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Science and the DeGroote School of Business. It is a member of the Group of Thirteen, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.
The university bears the name of Honourable William McMaster, a prominent Canadian Senator and banker who bequeathed C$900,000 to the founding of the university. McMaster was incorporated under the terms of an act of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1887, merging the Toronto Baptist College with Woodstock College. It opened in Toronto in 1890. Inadequate facilities and the gift of land in Hamilton prompted the institution to relocate in 1930. McMaster continued to be controlled by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec until it became a privately chartered, publicly funded non-denominational institution in 1957.
The university is co-educational and has nearly 23,000 undergraduate and over 3,500 post-graduate students. Alumni and former students of the university can be found all across Canada and in over 120 countries around the world. The McMaster athletic teams are known as the Marauders and are members of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport.