Brandeis University ( /ˈbrændaɪs/) is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles (14 km) west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2010, it was ranked by the U.S. News and World Report as the number 34 national university in the United States. Forbes listed Brandeis University as number 57 among all national universities and liberal arts colleges combined in 2010. Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian coeducational institution on the site of the former Middlesex University. The university is named for Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), the first Jewish Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Names associated with the conception of Brandeis include Israel Goldstein, George Alpert, C. Ruggles Smith, Albert Einstein, and Abram L. Sachar. C. Ruggles Smith was the son of Dr. John Hall Smith, founder of Middlesex University, who had died in 1944. In 1946, the university was on the brink of financial collapse. At the time, it was one of the few medical schools in the U. S.