Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

No other German university is as well-known around the world as the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg. As a result of its outstanding teaching and research, it plays at the very top of the international higher education Champions League. Traditionally strong in the humanities, today the university also leads in the natural sciences – for example, physics – in higher education rankings like that compiled by the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung. It is above all in medicine, however, that Heidelberg excels. Key areas of the university’s research are focused in that field: for example, molecular biology and cancer research. For centuries, the name of Heidelberg has been synonymous with student life, Romanticism and gentility. This image not only attracts more than 26,000 students to the banks of the Neckar, but also top researchers from around the world. Seven Nobel Prizes have gone to the 618-year-old university, which is Germany’s oldest. The laureates include Georg Wittig, Bert Sakmann, Walter Bothe and Hans Jensen. Many members of Germany’s intellectual and research elite are associated with this long-established university: Max Weber, Robert Bunsen and Georg Friedrich Hegel, for example, all taught in Heidelberg. Sixteen postgraduate research centres – more than at any other German higher education institution – ensure that the university will remain at the top of the research league in the future.

FACTS

Students: 26,742

Foreign students: 5,578

Professors: 403

Departments: 12

Year of foundation: 1386

Population: 143,000

Return to university overview ...here