Foundation and early history

William the Silent, founder of the university, in the 16th century.

The academy building of Leiden University in 1614.

Leiden anatomical theatre

In 1575, the emerging Dutch Republic did not have universities in its northern heartland. The only other university in the Habsburg Netherlands was the University of Leuven located in an area under firm Spanish control. Prince William founded Leiden University to give the Northern Netherlands an institution that could educate its citizens in religion and provide the government with educated men in all fields.^[9][10] It is said the choice fell on Leiden as a reward for the heroic defence of Leiden against Spanish attacks in 1574. The name of Philip II of Spain, William's adversary, appears on the official foundation certificate as he was still the de jure count of Holland.^[11] Philip II forbade all his subjects to study in Leiden.

The new institution was initially located in the Convent of Saint Barbara, then moved to the Faliede Bagijn Church in 1577 (now the location of the university museum) and in 1581 to a former convent of Cistercian nuns, a site which it still occupies, though the original building was destroyed by a fire in 1616.^[9]

Leiden University's reputation was created in part by the presence of scholars such as Justus Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Franciscus Gomarus, Hugo Grotius, Jacobus Arminius, Daniel Heinsius, and Gerhard Johann Vossius within fifty years of its founding. By the 1640s, over five hundred students were enrolled from all across Europe, making it the largest Protestant university.^[12][10] Baruch Spinoza discovered Descartes's work partly at Leiden University,^[13] which he visited for periods of study multiple times.^[14] In the 18th century, Jacobus Gronovius, Herman Boerhaave, Tiberius Hemsterhuis, and David Ruhnken were among the renowned academics of the university.

In 1896, the Zeeman effect was discovered at the institution by Pieter Zeeman and shortly afterward explained by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz.^[15] In the world's first university low-temperature laboratory, Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes achieved a temperature only one degree above absolute zero. In 1908, he was also the first to succeed in liquifying helium and has played a role in the discovery of superconductivity in metals.^[16]

Modern day

Leiden University Library in 1610

The University Library has more than 5.2 million books and fifty thousand journals. It also has collections of Western and Oriental manuscripts, printed books, archives, prints, drawings, photographs, maps, and atlases. It houses the world's largest collections on Indonesia and the Caribbean, collected by the Scaliger Institute which studies various aspects of knowledge transmissions and ideas through texts and images from antiquity to the present day. In 2005, the manuscript of Einstein on the quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas (the Einstein-Bose condensation) was discovered in one of Leiden's libraries.^[17]

Campus The Hague

A lecture hall in the Leiden University campus in the Hague.

In 1998, the university has expanded to The Hague which has become home to Campus The Hague, with six of the seven faculties represented and exclusive home to the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, International Studies and Leiden University College The Hague, a liberal arts and sciences college. Here, the university offers academic courses in the fields of law, political science, public administration and medicine. It occupied a number of buildings in the centre of the city, including a college building at Lange Voorhout, before moving into the new 'Wijnhaven' building on Turfmarkt in 2016.

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs was established in 2011, together with the University College, and one of the largest programmes of the Faculty of Humanities, International Studies.

Since 2017 Leiden University Medical Center also has a branch at Campus The Hague.

Undergraduate studies

Most of the university's departments offer their degree programme(s). Undergraduate programmes lead to either 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.

Graduate studies

Students can choose from a range of graduate programmes. Most of the above-mentioned undergraduate programmes can be continued with either a general or a specialised graduate program. Leiden University offers more than 100 graduate programs leading to either MA, MSc, MPhil, or LLM degrees. The MPhil is the most advanced graduate degree and is awarded by select university departments (mostly in the fields of Arts, Social Sciences, Archeology, Philosophy, and Theology). Admission to these programmes is highly selective and primarily aimed at those students opting for an academic career or before going into law or medicine. Traditionally, the MPhil degree enabled its holder to teach at the university levels as an associate professor.

The Pieter de la Court-building, the main building of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Doctorate programmes

Leiden Observatory of the university.

In addition, most departments, affiliated (research) institutes, or faculties offer doctorate programmes or positions, leading to the Ph.D. degree. Most of the Ph.D. programmes offered by the university are concentrated in several research schools or institutes.

Research schools and affiliated institutes

Research building of the Leiden University Medical Centre

Leiden University has more than 50 research and graduate schools and institutes. Some of them are fully affiliated with one faculty of the university, while others are interfaculty institutes or interuniversity institutes.

Notable alumni and professors

Of the 107 Spinoza Prize laureates (the highest scientific award of The Netherlands), twenty-six were granted to professors of Leiden University. Literary historian Frits van Oostrom was the first professor of Leiden to be granted the Spinoza award for his work on developing the NLCM centre (Dutch literature and culture in the Middle Ages) into a top research centre. Other Spinoza Prize winners are linguists Frederik Kortlandt and Pieter Muysken, mathematician Hendrik Lenstra, physicists Carlo Beenakker, Jan Zaanen, Dirk Bouwmeester and Michel Orrit, astronomers Ewine van Dishoeck, Marijn Franx and Alexander Tielens, transplantation biologist Els Goulmy, clinical epidemiologist Frits Rosendaal, pedagogue Marinus van IJzendoorn, archeologists Wil Roebroeks and Corinne Hofman, neurologist Michel Ferrari, classicist Ineke Sluiter, social psychologist Naomi Ellemers, statistician Aad van der Vaart, cognitive psychologist Eveline Crone, organisation psychologist Carsten de Dreu, chemical immunologist Sjaak Neefjes, parasitologist Maria Yazdanbakhsh, electrochemist Mark Koper and astrophysicist Ignas Snellen.

The Stevin Prize laureates who have achieved exceptional success in knowledge exchange and impact for society include the following Leiden professors: health psychologist Andrea Evers, immunology technologist Ton Schumacher and psychologist Judi Mesman.^[40] Among other leading professors are Wim Blockmans, professor of Medieval History, and Willem Adelaar, professor of Amerindian Languages.

Nobel laureates

Kamerlingh Onnes was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913. Three other professors received the Nobel Prize for their research performed at Universiteit Leiden: Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman received the Nobel Prize for their pioneering work in the field of optical and electronic phenomena, and the physiologist Willem Einthoven for his invention of the string galvanometer, which among other things, enabled the development of electrocardiography.

Nobel laureates associated with Leiden include the physicists Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and Paul Ehrenfest. Also: 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.^[41]

Other notable Leiden researchers were the Arabist and Islam expert Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, the law expert Cornelis van Vollenhoven and historian Johan Huizinga, all during the 1920s and 1930s. Martinus Beijerinck, one of the founders of virology, finished his Ph.D. at Leiden in 1877.