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Leiden University

Leiden University (), located in the city of Leiden, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Oldest Universities by Region (post 1500)|oldest university in the Netherlands.Technically the University of Leuven, currently in Belgium but in the year of its foundation (1425) located in the Netherlands, is the oldest university ever founded in the Netherlands, but Leuven is no longer part of the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William the Silent|William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close relationship. The Queens Juliana of the Netherlands|Juliana and Beatrix of the Netherlands|Beatrix and crown-prince Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange|Willem-Alexander studied at Leiden University. In 2005 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands|Beatrix received a rare honorary degree from Leiden University.Windows Media file of Queen Beatrix receiving degree, February 2005. Today, Leiden University has six faculties, over 50 departments and more than 150 undergraduate programmes, and it enjoys an outstanding international reputation. Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks Leiden University as the 71st best university worldwide.ARWU 2007 Top 100 Universities. The Times Higher Education 2008 ranked Leiden University 63rd in the world overall.THE 2008 Top 200 World Universities The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group, the Europaeum and the League of European Research Universities. Leiden University houses more than 40 national and international (research) institutes.

History

In 1575, the emerging Dutch Republic did not have any universities in its northern heartland. The only other university in the Netherlands was in southern Leuven, firmly under Spanish control. The scientific renaissance had begun to highlight the importance of academic study, so William the Silent|Prince William founded the first Dutch university in Leiden as a reward for the heroic Siege of Leiden|defence of Leiden against Spanish attacks in the previous year. Ironically, the name of Philip II of Spain, William's adversary, appears on the official foundation certificate, as he was still the ''de jure'' count of Holland. It is traditionally said that the citizens of Leiden were offered the choice between a university and a certain exemption from taxes, and that the citizens believed that a tax law could be rescinded, whereas the great universities of Europe had survived for many centuries. Originally located in the convent of St Barbara, the university moved to the convent of the White Nuns in 1581, a site which it still occupies, though the original building was destroyed in 1616. The presence within half a century of the date of its foundation of such scholars as Justus Lipsius, Joseph Justus Scaliger|Joseph Scaliger, Franciscus Gomarus, Grotius|Hugo Grotius, Jacobus Arminius, Daniel Heinsius and Gerhard Johann Vossius, at once raised Leiden university to the highest European fame, a position which the learning and reputation of Jacobus Gronovius, Herman Boerhaave, Tiberius Hemsterhuis and David Ruhnken, among others, enabled it to maintain down to the end of the 18th century. At the end of the nineteenth century, Leiden University again became one of Europe's leading universities. At the world’s first university low-temperature laboratory, professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes achieved temperatures of only one degree above absolute zero of -273 degrees Celsius. In 1908 he was also the first to succeed in Liquid helium|liquifying helium and can be credited with the discovery of the superconductivity in metals. Kamerlingh Onnes was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913. Three other professors received the Nobel Prize for their research performed at Universiteit Leiden: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman received the Nobel Prize for their pioneering work in the field of optical and electronic phenomena, and the physiologist Willem Einthoven for his invention of the string galvanometer, which among other things, enabled the development of electrocardiography. These Nobel prize winners, but also the physicists Albert Einstein and Paul Ehrenfest, the Arabist and Islam expert Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, the law expert Cornelis van Vollenhoven and historian Johan Huizinga, were among those who pushed the university into a place of international prominence during the 1920s and 1930s. In 2005 the manuscript of Albert Einstein|Einstein on the quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas (the Einstein-Bose condensation) was discovered in one of Leiden's libraries.BBC NEWS | Europe | Student unearths Einstein paper. At present, Leiden has a firmly established international position among the top research institutes in many fields, including the natural sciences, medicine, social and behavioural sciences, law, arts and letters. Of the fifty-five Spinozapremie (the highest scientific award of The Netherlands), twelve were granted to professors of the Universiteit Leiden. Literary historian Frits van Oostrom was the first professor of Leiden to be granted the Spinoza award for his work on developing the NLCM centre (Dutch literature and culture in the Middle Ages) into a top research centre. Other Spinozapremie winners are linguists Frederik Kortlandt and Pieter Muysken, mathematician Hendrik Lenstra, Carlo Beenakker, who works in the field of mesoscopic physics, Ewine van Dishoeck, astronomer at Leiden Observatory, transplantation biologist Els Goulmy, clinical epidemiologist Frits Rosendaal, Rien van IJzendoorn professor of education and child studies, physicist Jan Zaanen, archeologist Wil Roebroeks and neurologist Michel Ferrari. Among other leading professors are Wim Blockmans, professor of Medieval History, and Willem Adelaar, professor of Amerindian Languages. The portraits of many famous professors since the earliest days hang in the university aula, one of the most memorable places, as Carsten Niebuhr|Niebuhr called it, in the history of science. The Leiden University Library|University Library, which has more than 3.5 million books and fifty thousand journals, also has a number of internationally renowned special collections of western and oriental manuscripts, printed books, archives, prints, drawings, photographs, maps, and atlases. Scholars from all over the world visit Leiden University Library, the oldest in the Netherlands. The research activities of the Leiden University Library#Scaliger Institute|Scaliger Institute focus on these special collections and concentrate particularly on the various aspects of the transmission of knowledge and ideas through texts and images from antiquity to the present day. Among the institutions affiliated with the university are The KITLV or Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (founded in 1851), the Leiden Observatory|observatory 1633; the natural history museum, with a very complete anatomical cabinet; the museum of antiquities (''Museum van Oudheden''), with specially valuable Egyptian and Indian departments; a museum of Dutch antiquities from the earliest times; and three ethnographical museums, of which the nucleus was Philipp Franz von Siebold's Japanese collections. The anatomy|anatomical and pathology|pathological laboratories of the university are modern, and the museums of geology and mineralogy have been restored. The Hortus Botanicus Leiden|Hortus Botanicus (botanical garden) is the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, and one of the oldest in the world. Plants from all over the world have been carefully cultivated here by experts for more than four centuries. The Clusius garden (a reconstruction), the 18th century Orangery with its monumental tub plants, the rare collection of historical trees hundreds of years old, the Japanese Siebold Memorial Museum symbolising the historical link between East and West, the tropical greenhouses with their world class plant collections, and the central square and Conservatory exhibiting exotic plants from South Africa and southern Europe. Research at Leiden is well developed. There are many university research institutes and Leiden participates in over forty nation-wide research schools, twelve of which being located in the heart of Leiden.

The institution

The university has no central campus; its buildings are spread over the city. Some buildings, like the Gravensteen, are very old, while buildings like Lipsius and Gorlaeus are much more modern. The university is divided into six major faculties which offer approximately 50 undergraduate degree programs and over 100 graduate programs.

References

External links

- Homepage of Leiden University (in English)
- Homepage of Leiden University (in Dutch)
- Graduate Programs in English
- Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography Category:Leiden University|* Category:Universities in the Netherlands Category:Buildings and structures in Leiden Category:Coimbra Group Category:Educational institutions established in the 1570s Category:1575 establishments zh-min-nan:Leiden Tāi-ha̍k simple:University of Leiden

Related Images

- The Academy building of the Leiden university
- The Leiden University Medical Center
- A new professor's inauguration lecture in the ''Academiegebouw'', 2008

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