Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
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Wikipedia-Article "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven"
| Catholic University of Leuven | |
| Katholieke Universiteit Leuven | |
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| Latin name | Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis |
| Motto | Sedes Sapientiae (Seat of Wisdom, i.e. of Knowledge) |
| Established | 1425 |
| School type | Catholic |
| Rector | Marc Vervenne (2005- ) |
| Location | Leuven, Belgium |
| Enrollment | 31,151 students (2005) |
| Faculty | 7,725 (2005) |
| Member | Coimbra Group, LERU |
| Homepage | www.kuleuven.be |
The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (or K.U.Leuven, or in English Catholic University of Leuven - also the translated name of its French-speaking sister university) - is a Flemish university, located in the town of Leuven in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking (northern) region of Belgium. It was founded in 1425 by Pope Martin V and is now the oldest Catholic university in the world still in existence. In its early days this university was modeled after the universities of Paris, Cologne and Vienna.
The main campus of the university is located in Leuven, while the French-speaking Université Catholique de Louvain is in Louvain-la-Neuve. Until 1968, there was only one University of Leuven, where both Dutch language and French language (although mostly French) were used. After repeated protests from Flemish organisations and student population, however, the University was split. The Dutch University of Leuven remained in the city of Leuven, while the French speaking Université Catholique de Louvain moved to the newly built campus of Louvain-la-Neuve, south of the linguistic border dividing Belgium (there is about a forty-five minute drive between the two universities). The main library, with all its old documents was split at that moment also. At the time of the separation, all books with an odd letter stayed in Leuven, while the even-numbered ones moved to Louvain-la-Neuve. Although this split conceptually took place, in reality, it was merely a decision based on equity and intended to create a system for negotiation. In the end, of course, rationality prevailed: bequests, serials, encyclopedias, and so on, were kept together in one location, while the remainder of books with no claim to them by either university was divided according to book number. The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven also owns the university of Kortrijk, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Afdeling Kortrijk (KULAK).
The first library was located in the university halls, and was enlarged in 1725 in baroque style. In 1914, during World War I, Leuven was plundered by German troops, and a large part of the city was put to fire, effectively destroying about half of the city. The library was lost, as well as about 300,000 books, and a huge collection of manuscripts collected since the university's founding in 1425.
The new main library was built between 1921 and 1928 and designed by the American architect Whitney Warren in low countries neorenaissance style. Its monumentality is a reflection of the victory against Prussian Germany. It is one of the largest universitary buildings in the city. However, in 1940, ironically, during the German armed forces invasion of Leuven, the building largely burnt down, including its (at that time) 900,000 manuscripts and books. After the reconstruction and the split of the university in 1968, nowadays the library owns about one million works.
K.U.Leuven is a strongly research oriented university (notwithstanding it has more than 30,000 students), and its ambition is to be among the top European universities in terms of scientific output. For instance, Rijndael, the cipher chosen as the Advanced Encryption Standard, was developed at K.U.Leuven.
The university is a member of the Coimbra Group and the LERU.
Alumni
- Adriaan Florisz. Boeyens (1459 - 1523), later Pope Adrian VI.
- Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536), humanist.
- Gerard Mercator (1512 - 1594), cartographer
- Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564), father of modern anatomy.
- Rembert Dodoens (1517 - 1585), botanist.
- Justus Lipsius (1547 - 1606), humanist.
- Cornelius Otto Jansen (1585 - 1638), father of the Jansenist movement.
- Georges Lemaître (1894 - 1966), astronomer and proposer of the Big Bang theory.
- Joan Daemen (1965 - ), cryptographer, one of the designers of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
- Vincent Rijmen (1970 - ), cryptographer, one of the designers of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
See also
- List of universities in Belgium
- Coimbra Group (a network of leading European universities)
- Ghent University
External links
| Coimbra Group (of European research universities) |
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| Aarhus | Barcelona | Bergen | Bologna | Bristol | Budapest | Cambridge | Coimbra | Dublin | Edinburgh | Galway | Geneva | Göttingen | Granada | Graz | Groningen | Heidelberg | Jena | Kraków | Leiden | Leuven | Louvain-la-Neuve | Lyon | Montpellier | Oxford | Padua | Pavia | Poitiers | Prague | Salamanca | Siena | Tartu | Thessaloniki | Turku I | Turku II | Uppsala | Würzburg | |
| League of European Research Universities |
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Cambridge | Edinburgh | Geneva | Heidelberg | Helsinki | Karolinska (Stockholm) | Leiden | Leuven | Milan | Munich | Oxford | Strasbourg I (Louis Pasteur) |