Leiden University

Leiden University (abbreviated as LEI; Dutch: Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. It was established in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as a Protestant institution, and it is the oldest surviving university in the Netherlands.

The university has seven academic faculties and over fifty subject departments, along with more than forty national and international research institutes. Its main campus is made up of several buildings spread across Leiden. A second campus in The Hague is home to a liberal arts college, Leiden University College The Hague, and several of the university's faculties. Leiden University is a member of the Coimbra Group and the Europaeum, and it is a founding member of the League of European Research Universities.

The university has produced twenty-six Spinoza Prize Laureates and sixteen Nobel Laureates. Members of the Dutch royal family, such as Queen Juliana, Queen Beatrix, and King Willem-Alexander, are alumni of the university. Ten prime ministers of the Netherlands have studied there, including Mark Rutte. US president John Quincy Adams also studied at the university.

History

In 1575, Prince William founded Leiden University to give the Northern Netherlands a place to educate its citizens in religion and to train educated men for the government. At that time, the emerging Dutch Republic had no universities in its northern heartland. The other universities in the Habsburg Netherlands were the University of Leuven and the University of Douai, which were under firm Spanish control. Leiden was said to have been chosen as a reward for its heroic defence of Leiden against Spanish attacks in 1574. The name of Philip II of Spain, William's enemy, appears on the foundation certificate, because he was still the de jure count of Holland. Philip II forbade his subjects to study in Leiden. The university first met in the Convent of Saint Barbara, moved in 1577 to the Faliede Bagijn Church, and in 1581 to a former convent of Cistercian nuns, a site it still occupies. The original building was destroyed by a fire in 1616.

Within fifty years, scholars such as Justus Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Franciscus Gomarus, Hugo Grotius, Jacobus Arminius, Daniel Heinsius, and Gerhard Johann Vossius helped build its reputation. By the 1640s, over five hundred students from across Europe were enrolled, making it the largest Protestant university. Baruch Spinoza discovered Descartes's work partly at Leiden, visiting for periods of study several times. In the 18th century, Jacobus Gronovius, Herman Boerhaave, Tiberius Hemsterhuis, and David Ruhnken were renowned academics. In 1896, the Zeeman effect was discovered at the university by Pieter Zeeman and shortly afterward explained by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. In the world's first university low-temperature laboratory, Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes reached a temperature only one degree above absolute zero. In 1908, he was also the first to succeed in liquifying helium and played a role in the discovery of superconductivity in metals. The University Library has more than 5.2 million books and fifty thousand journals, along with collections of Western and Oriental manuscripts, printed books, and atlases. It houses the world's largest collections on Indonesia and the Caribbean, gathered by the Scaliger Institute. In 2005, Einstein's manuscript on the quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas (the Einstein-Bose condensation) was discovered in one of Leiden's libraries. In 2012, Leiden formed a strategic alliance with Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam to improve the quality of their research and teaching. The university is also the unofficial home of the Bilderberg Group, a meeting of high-level political and economic figures from North America and Europe. From 2017, Leiden partnered with Duke University School of Law to run a joint summer program on global and transnational law from its Hague campus.

Location and buildings

The university has no single central campus, so its buildings are spread across the city. Some, like the Gravensteen, are very old, while Van Steenis, Lipsius and Gorlaeus are much more modern. Linked institutions include the KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, founded in 1851), the Leiden Observatory (1633), and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities), which has valuable Egyptian and Indian departments. Three ethnographical museums grew from the Japanese collections of Philipp Franz von Siebold. The Hortus Botanicus is the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands and one of the oldest in the world, and it has grown plants from around the world for more than four centuries. Its Japanese Siebold Memorial Museum shows the historical link between East and West.

The "Sweat Room" (Dutch: Zweetkamertje) is a small room in the university's Academy Building. Doctoral candidates traditionally waited here for the results of their PhD defenses, often feeling very nervous, which is how it got its name. Successful candidates began writing their names on the walls, and the room now holds thousands of signatures, including those of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and members of the Dutch royal family. Master's students may also sign after graduating. In 2014, a crowdfunding campaign raised money to repair the room's worn plaster. In 1998, the university also expanded to The Hague, where Campus The Hague hosts six of the seven faculties, the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, International Studies, and Leiden University College The Hague. The campus first used buildings in the city centre, including one at Lange Voorhout, before moving into the new Wijnhaven building in 2016. Since 2017, the Leiden University Medical Center has also had a branch there.

Organisation

The university is divided into seven major faculties. Together they offer about 50 undergraduate degree programmes and over 100 graduate programmes.

• Archaeology
• Governance and Global Affairs
• Humanities
• Law
• Medicine / LUMC
• Science
• Social and Behavioural Sciences

Academic profile

Most of the university's departments offer their own degree programmes. Undergraduate programmes lead to a B.A., B.Sc., or LL.B. degree. Other degrees, such as the B.Eng. or B.F.A., are not awarded at Leiden University. Students can choose from more than 100 graduate programmes leading to an MA, MSc, MPhil, or LLM degrees. Most undergraduate programmes can be continued with a general or specialised graduate programme. The MPhil is the most advanced graduate degree and is awarded by select departments, mostly in Arts, Social Sciences, Archaeology, Philosophy, and Theology. Places are very limited and are mainly for students planning an academic career or going into law or medicine. Traditionally, the MPhil enabled its holder to teach at university level as an associate professor.

Most departments, research institutes, and faculties also offer doctorate programmes leading to the Ph.D. degree, and most of these are based in research schools or institutes. Leiden University has more than 50 research and graduate schools and institutes. Some are fully part of one faculty, while others are shared between faculties or between universities.

Rankings and reputations

Main article: List of Leiden University people

Leiden professors have won many important awards. Twenty-nine of the 112 Spinoza Prize winners, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, were Leiden professors. Frits van Oostrom was the first Leiden professor to win it, for helping turn the NLCM centre (Dutch literature and culture in the Middle Ages) into a top research centre. Other Spinoza Prize winners include Carlo Beenakker, Dirk Bouwmeester, Eveline Crone, Ewine van Dishoeck, Carsten de Dreu, Naomi Ellemers, Bernet Elzinga, Michel Ferrari, Marijn Franx, Els Goulmy, Corinne Hofman, Marinus van IJzendoorn, Marc Koper, Frederik Kortlandt, Hendrik Lenstra, Pieter Muysken, Sjaak Neefjes, Michel Orrit, Hermen Overkleeft, Judith Pollmann, Wil Roebroeks, Frits Rosendaal, Ineke Sluiter, Ignaas Snellen, Alexander Tielens, Aad van der Vaart, Maria Yazdanbakhsh, and Jan Zaanen. Leiden professors Andrea Evers, Ton Schumacher and Judi Mesman have also received the Stevin Prize, which honours exceptional success in sharing knowledge and having an impact on society. Earlier notable researchers at Leiden included Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Cornelis van Vollenhoven and Johan Huizinga during the 1920s and 1930s, and Martinus Beijerinck, one of the founders of virology, who finished his Ph.D. at Leiden in 1877.

Many Nobel Prize winners have been linked to Leiden. Kamerlingh Onnes won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913. Three other professors received Nobel Prizes for research done at Leiden: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman for their pioneering work on optical and electronic phenomena, and the physiologist Willem Einthoven for inventing the string galvanometer, which helped make electrocardiography possible. Other Nobel laureates connected with Leiden include the physicists Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi and Paul Ehrenfest, as well as Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Tobias Asser, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Igor Tamm, Jan Tinbergen, Nikolaas Tinbergen, Tjalling Koopmans, Nicolaas Bloembergen, and Niels Jerne.