Founding and Early History
As with most medieval universities, Uppsala University initially grew out of an ecclesiastical center. The archbishopric of Uppsala had been one of the most important sees in Sweden since Christianity first spread to this region in the ninth century. Uppsala had also long been a hub for regional trade, and had contained human settlements dating back into the deep recesses of the Middle Ages. As was also the case with most medieval universities, Uppsala had initially been chartered through a papal bull. Uppsala’s bull, which granted the university its corporate rights, was issued by Pope Sixtus IV in 1477, and established a number of provisions. Among the most important of these was that the university was officially given the same freedoms and privileges as the University of Bologna. This included the right to establish the four traditional faculties of theology, law (Canon law and Roman law), medicine, and philosophy, and to award the bachelors, masters, licentiate, and doctorate degrees. The archbishop of Uppsala was also named as the university’s chancellor, and was charged with the duty to ensure that the rights and privileges of the university and its members were preserved.
Faculties and organization
- Faculty of Arts*
- Faculty of Social Sciences*
- Faculty of Languages*
- Faculty of Science and Technology*
- Faculty of Theology
- Faculty of Law
- Faculty of Medicine
- Faculty of Pharmacy**
- Faculty of Education and Teaching Professions***
*These four are derived from the original Philosophical Faculty.
**The Faculty of Pharmacy was originally an independent school in Stockholm, later moved to Uppsala and incorporated with the university.
***Formerly a department of Education, it was in 199x raised to the status of a faculty in its own right.
The engineering programs have from 1982 been marketed as the Uppsala School of Engineering (Uppsala Tekniska Högskola). This was however never a separate institution, but only a unit within the Faculty of Science and Technology and use of the term has been phased out after the Faculty of Natural Sciences was renamed the Faculty of Sciences and Technology in the 1990s. See also the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory. The university library is called Carolina Rediviva.
Student life
Peculiar to the two oldest universities in Sweden (Uppsala and Lund University), but with roots going back to the medieval university in Paris, is the system of student nations, societies of students according to province of origin. The present 13 nations have roots in the early part of the 17th century, with some of them being the result of mergers of older, smaller nations that took place in the early 19th century in order to facilitate the financing of building projects. The nations were originally seen as subversive organisations promoting less virtuous aspects of student life, but in 1663 the consistorium (board) of the university made membership in a nation legal, each nation being placed under the inspectorship of a professor. Somewhat later membership in a nation was made compulsory, a rule which is still in place.
Notable people connected to Uppsala University (very incomplete)
in the entrance hall of Carolina Rediviva, the main building of the university library, Uppsala.]]
Nobel laureates who have studied or worked at the university
Sorted according to year of birth. Includes peace and literature prizes.
Natural sciences and medicine
- Olaus Rudbeckius (1630-1702), a physician and professor of medicine as well as an engineer, architect and an imaginative writer of chauvinistic (pseudo)history
- Olaus Rudbeckius, junior (1660-1740), botanist
- Anders Celsius (1701-1744), physicist and astronomer, inventor of the centigrade scale
- Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), botanist, the father of taxonomy
- Johan Gustaf Wallerius (1709-1785), chemist and mineralogist
- Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), botanist
- Daniel Solander (1733-1782), botanist
- Torbern Bergman (1735-1784), chemist
- Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), botanist
- Johan Gottlieb Gahn (1745-1818), mineralogist, discoverer of manganese
- Peter Gustaf Tengmalm (1754-1803), physician and naturalist
- Johan Gadolin (1760-1852), chemist, physicist and mineralogist
- Anders Gustaf Ekeberg (1767-1813), chemist, discoverer of tantalum
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848), physician and chemist, considered one of the fathers of modern chemistry; invented modern chemical notation and discovered the elements silicon, selenium, thorium, and cerium
- Nils Gabriel Sefström (1787-1845), chemist, discoverer of vanadium
- Johan August Arfwedson (1792-1841), chemist, discoverer of lithium
- Elias Magnus Fries (1794-1878), botanist, the father of modern mushroom taxonomy
- Anders Jonas Ångström (1814-1874), physicist
- Lars Fredrik Nilson (1840-1899), chemist, discoverer of scandium
- Per Teodor Cleve (1840-1905), chemist and geologist.
- Oskar Backlund (1846-1916), astronomer
- Knut Ångström (1857-1910), physicist
- Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), physicist and chemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1903
- Allvar Gullstrand (1862-1930), ophthalmologist; Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1911
- Helge von Koch (1870-1924), mathematician
- Robert Bárány (1876-1936), physicist, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1914 (professor in Uppsala from 1917)
- Theodor (The) Svedberg (1884-1971), chemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1926
- Manne Siegbahn (1886-1978), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1924
- Arne Tiselius (1902-1971), biochemist; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1948.
- Arne Beurling (1905-1986), mathematician
- Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1970
- Kai Siegbahn (b. 1918), physicist; Nobel Laureate in Physics 1981. Son of Manne Siegbahn.
- Svante Pääbo (b. 1955), evolutionary biologist
Humanities and social sciences
Technical innovators and industrialists
Art and literature
- Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), scientist, but mostly known as a philosopher and religious mystic
- Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795), poet and composer (matriculated 1758 but left after less than a year)
- Erik Gustaf Geijer, historian, poet
- August Strindberg (1849-1912), novelist and playwright
- Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1864-1931), poet
- Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974), novelist, playwright. Nobel laureate in literature
- Karin Boye (1900-1941), poet and novelist
- Sara Lidman, novelist
Politics and civil service
- Hjalmar Branting (1860-1925), Swedish Prime minister. Nobel Peace laureate.
- Alva Myrdal (1902-1986), Politician, diplomat. Nobel Peace laureate.
- Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), UN Secretary General. Nobel Peace laureate.
- Hans Blix (b. 1928), Diplomat; Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs 1978-1979, Head of the IAEA 1981-1997, of the UNMOVIC 2000-2003.
- Hans Corell (b. 1939), Diplomat; UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs
- Anna Lindh (1957-2003), Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Assassinated in 2003.
External links
See also: Royal Swedish Society of Science in Uppsala, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, List of universities in Sweden
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