University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen (Danish: Københavns Universitet, abbr. KU) is a public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University.

The University of Copenhagen consists of six different faculties, with teaching taking place in its four distinct campuses, all situated in Copenhagen. The university operates 36 different departments and 122 separate research centres in Copenhagen, as well as a number of museums and botanical gardens in and outside the Danish capital. The University of Copenhagen also owns and operates multiple research stations around Denmark, with two additional ones located in Greenland. Additionally, the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and the public hospitals of the Capital and Zealand Region of Denmark constitute the conglomerate Copenhagen University Hospital.

As of October 2022, 10 Nobel laureates and 1 Turing Award laureate have been affiliated with the University of Copenhagen as students, alumni or faculty. Alumni include one president of the United Nations General Assembly and at least 37 prime ministers of Denmark.

History

The University of Copenhagen was founded on 1 June 1479 and is the oldest university in Denmark. In 1475, Christian I of Denmark received a papal bull from Pope Sixtus IV with permission to establish a university in Denmark. The bull was issued on 19 June 1475 as a result of the visit to Rome by Christian I's wife, Dorothea of Brandenburg, Queen of Denmark.

On 4 October 1478 Christian I of Denmark issued a royal decree by which he officially established the University of Copenhagen. In this decree, Christian I set down the rules and laws governing the university. The royal decree elected magistar Peder Albertsen as vice chancellor of the university, and the task was his to employ various learned scholars at the new university and thereby establish its first four faculties: theology, law, medicine and philosophy. The royal decree made the University of Copenhagen enjoy royal patronage from its very beginning. Furthermore, the university was explicitly established as an autonomous institution, giving it a great degree of juridical freedom. As such, the University of Copenhagen was to be administered without royal interference, and it was not subject to the usual laws governing the Danish people.

The University of Copenhagen was dissolved in about 1531 as a result of the spread of Protestantism. It was re-established in 1537 by King Christian III after the Lutheran Reformation. The king charged Johannes Bugenhagen, who came from Wittenberg to Copenhagen to take up a chair of theology, with the drawing up of a new University Charter. The resulting Charter was issued in 1539. Between 1675 and 1788, the university introduced the concept of degree examinations. An examination for theology was added in 1675, followed by law in 1736. By 1788, all faculties required an examination before they would issue a degree.

In 1807, most of the university's buildings were heavily damaged during the British bombardment of Copenhagen. By 1836, however, the new main building of the university was inaugurated amid extensive building that continued until the end of the century. The University Library (now a part of the Royal Library), the Zoological Museum, the Geological Museum, the Botanic Garden with greenhouses, and the Technical College were also established during this period.

Between 1842 and 1850, the faculties at the university were restructured. Starting in 1842, the University Faculty of Medicine and the Academy of Surgeons merged to form the Faculty of Medical Science, while in 1848 the Faculty of Law was reorganised and became the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Political Science. In 1850, the Faculty of Mathematics and Science was separated from the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1845 and 1862 Copenhagen co-hosted Nordic student meetings with Lund University.

Campuses

The university has four main campus areas that are located in the Capital Region (three in Copenhagen and one in Frederiksberg):

North Campus – home to most of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.

City Campus – home to the Faculty of Social Sciences and Central Administration as well as parts of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Science.

South Campus – houses the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Theology, and a small proportion of the Faculty of Science.

Frederiksberg Campus – home to sections of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.

The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Science also use the Taastrup Campus, which is located in Taastrup on the western outskirts of Copenhagen. The Faculty of Science also has facilities in Helsingør, Hørsholm and Nødebo.

Organisation and administration

The university is governed by a board consisting of 11 members: 6 members recruited outside the university form the majority of the board, 2 members are appointed by the scientific staff, 1 member is appointed by the administrative staff, and 2 members are appointed by the university students. The rector, the prorector and the director of the university are appointed by the university board. The rector in turn appoints directors of the different parts of the central administration and deans of the different faculties. The deans appoint heads of 50 departments. There is no faculty senate and faculty is not involved in the appointment of rector, deans, or department heads. Hence the university has no faculty governance, although there are elected Academic Boards at faculty level who advise the deans. As of 2018, the governing body manages an annual budget of about DKK 8.9 billion.

The university is organized into six faculties and about 100 departments and research centres. The university employs about 5,600 academic staff and 4,400 technical and administrative staff. The six faculties are:

• Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
• Faculty of Humanities
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Science
• Faculty of Social Sciences
• Faculty of Theology

The total number of enrolled students is about 36,500, including about 21,000 undergraduate students and 15,500 graduate students as of 2024. The university has an international graduate talent programme which provides grants for international Ph.D., students and a tenure track carrier system. It operates about fifty master's programmes taught in English, and has arranged about 150 exchange agreements with other institutions and 800 Erasmus agreements. Each year there are about 1,700 incoming exchange students, 2,000 outbound exchange students and 4,000 international degree-seeking students. About 3,000 PhD students study there each year.

University housing

Most university students stay in privately owned dormitories (kollegier in Danish) or apartments in Copenhagen. There are five dormitories that are partially administered by the university; however, only students who have passed at least two years of studies are considered for admission. These are normally referred to as the old dormitories, and they consist of: Regensen, Elers' Kollegium, Borchs Kollegium, Hassagers Kollegium, and Valkendorfs Kollegium. The University of Copenhagen also offers Carlsberg Foundation researcher apartments for a duration of 6 months to 3 years for visiting research and academic research staff who affiliated with research projects funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

The Housing Foundation Copenhagen is a separate commercial entity to the University of Copenhagen run by Chairman Erik Bisgaard Madsen and a board of directors. The Housing Foundation Copenhagen provides short-term housing exclusively for university international students ( sometimes Danish students), university staff and guest researchers. Their central office is based at South Campus. The Housing Foundation Copenhagen has received considerable criticism for the exploitation of international students for business profits and poor living conditions, and most recently the refusal of shortening contracts for many international students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seal

The university's oldest known seal dates from a 1531 letter, it depicts Saint Peter with a key and a book. In a circle around him is the text

When the university was re-established by Christian III in 1537 after the Protestant Reformation, it received a new seal, showing king Christian III with crown, sceptre, and globus cruciger above a crowned coat of arms vertically divided between halved versions of the coat of arms of Denmark (to the viewer's left, dexter) and the coat of arms of Norway (to the viever's right, sinister). The text is

The 1537 seal is very similar to the current seal, which was made in 2000 and is shown at the top of this page. The text is different and the crowned shield shows the coat of arms of Denmark (as has been the case since 1820, when the heraldic reference to Norway was removed). The text is

In addition to the university seal, each of the university's six faculties carry seals of their own.

International reputation

The 2021 CWTS Leiden Ranking ranked the University of Copenhagen as the best university in Denmark and best in Continental Europe, fourth in Europe (after Oxford, UCL and Cambridge) and 27th in the world.

The 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked the University of Copenhagen as the best university in Denmark and Scandinavia, 7th in Europe and 30th in the world. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2021, the University of Copenhagen was ranked first in Denmark and 84th in the world. In the 2021 QS World University Rankings list, the University of Copenhagen was ranked first in Denmark and 76th in the world. In the 2021 U.S. News & World Report's Best Global Universities Rankings list, the University of Copenhagen was ranked first in Denmark and 34th in the world.

Cooperative agreements with other universities

The university cooperates with universities around the world. In January 2006, the University of Copenhagen entered into a partnership of ten top universities, along with the: Australian National University, ETH Zürich, National University of Singapore, Peking University, University of California, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of Tokyo and Yale University. The partnership is referred to as the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU).

The Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics at University of Copenhagen signed a cooperation agreement with the Danish Royal School of Library and Information Science in 2009.

The university hosts the annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference in cooperation with Columbia University.

The University of Copenhagen is an active member of the University of the Arctic. UArctic is an international cooperative network based in the Circumpolar Arctic region, consisting of more than 200 universities, colleges, and other organizations with an interest in promoting education and research in the Arctic region.

List of rectors

Henrik Caspar Wegener (2017–present). He is the 259th rector.

Notable alumni

Over the course of its history, a sizeable number of University of Copenhagen alumni have become notable in their fields, both academic, and in the wider world.

Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Danish astronomer, first scientific documentation of supernovas, mentor of Johannes Kepler

Thomas Fincke (1561–1656), Danish mathematician and physicist

Caspar Bartholin (1585–1629), professor in medicine and theology. Author of textbooks on anatomy and the discoverer of the workings of the olfactory nerve.

Olaus Wormius (1588–1655), Danish physician and antiquarian

Thomas Bartholin (1616–1680), discoverer of the lymphatic system

Rasmus Bartholin (1625–1698), professor in geometry and medicine. He discovered birefringence, but was unable to give a scientific explanation.

Thomas Hansen Kingo (1634–1703), Danish bishop and poet

Nicholas Steno (1638–1696), a pioneer in anatomy and geology

Ole Rømer (1644–1710), Danish astronomer. He made the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

• Peder Horrebow (1679–1764), Danish astronomer and member of Académie des Sciences
• Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), Danish-Norwegian writer and playwright
• Christian Jacob Protten (1715–1769), Euro-African Moravian missionary pioneer, linguist, translator and educationalist-administrator
• Morten Thrane Brunnich (1737–1827), Danish zoologist
• Caspar Wessel (1745–1818), mathematician

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