The University of Bern, based in the Swiss capital, was officially founded in 1834 - although it can trace its roots back to the 16th century, when it became compulsory for monks to be educated in a higher education institution.
It was in the 1800s, however, that the university was officially founded, growing in size throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in line with the city of Bern’s own booming fortunes.
The university played a key role in the evolution of women's studies. Even in 1870, the the institution had a female student -Catharina Gontscharoff - registered. In 1899, the institution’s Female Students' Society was established, representing women's interests. Its motto was: "Same Rights, Same Duties".
The university has some prestigious former faculty members. Albert Einstein taught theoretical physics at Bern in 1908, and the following year the Russian philiospher Anna Tumarkin became a professor (and the first European lecturer to accept PhD students).
The University of Bern is not located on a single, main campus. Instead, its faculties and schools are based in the Länggasse area - a district net to the city centre known as the academic part of the town.
The institution has also obtained and repurposed other buildings in the area. Its Faculty of Theology (along with some other faculties), for example, is based in a former chocolate factory. Another former factory known as the vonRoll site is also to be turned into a university building, and will house the Department of Social Sciences.
Famous alumni of the university include philosopher Walter Benjamin, Nobel Prizewinner for chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, and the writer John le Carré.
The University of Bern offers top quality across the board: it enjoys special recognition in leading-edge disciplines, is reputed for the excellent quality of its teaching, offers a delightful setting, and a campus environment intimately linked to the social, economic and political life of the city. The university's comprehensive offering includes 8 faculties and some 160 institutes that date back to the XVIth century. Its academic and research organisation prides itself on its interdisciplinarity, exemplified by its five National Centres of Competence in Research: International Trade Regulation, TransCure (Membrane Transport Research), MUST (Molecular Ultrafast Science and Technology), PlanetS (how planet systems are formed and how they develop) and RNA and Disease. The university is actively involved in a wide range of European and worldwide research projects, notably in the field of space research. The city of Bern is listed among the cities that offer the best quality of life in the world: the people of Bern are welcoming and peaceable, and the old town of Bern, nestling in a breath-taking setting surrounded by the Swiss Alps, is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.
