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Doctor of Philosophy n. (also with lower-case initials) a person who has been awarded the highest class of degree for original academic research, now typically involving three or more years of postgraduate study at a university or other academic institution culminating in the writing of a dissertation or thesis, which is defended before experts in the field; (also) a degree qualification or course of this type, a doctorate. Often abbreviated as PhD n. or (less commonly) D.Phil.In the medieval universities of continental Europe, the title given to holders of the highest degree in the Faculty of Arts was Magister Artium (Master of Arts), while holders of the highest degree in the other faculties (Theology, Medicine, and Law) were styled Doctor. This inconsistency was addressed in the mid 17th cent. with the introduction of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophiae Doctor) in place of Magister Artium in German universities (in which the Faculty of Arts was known as the philosophische Fakultät); like other doctoral degrees at this time, it was awarded for advanced scholarship rather than original research. By the early 19th cent. the Faculty of Philosophy in German universities had come to house all subjects now commonly known as sciences and humanities, and began to demand original contributions to research, attested by a dissertation, for the award of Doctor of Philosophy (or PhD) in any of these fields. The research-based PhD on the German model was subsequently adopted in various parts of the English-speaking world: the degree was first awarded in the United States by Yale University in 1861 and was adopted by U.K. universities in 1917. [Compare post-classical Latin doctor philosophiae (16th cent., as an equivalent term to magister).]