The University of Warsaw (UW), which numbers Frederic Chopin, Tadeusz Kościuszko, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Czesław Miłosz among its alumni, is the jewel in Poland's collegiate crown. The whole place today is teeming with life and attracts leading intellectuals, authority figures, presidents and kings.

The UW is among the world's best IT colleges. UW student Tomasz Czajka has won the prestigious TopCoder competition three times running. Students from the Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics took the gold and silver at the 2005 ACM Central European Programming Contest in Budapest. The UW won its second world championship at the IBM-sponsored ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in Tokyo this year, solving eight of the 10 problems.

A team led by Prof. Andrzej Udalski from the UW Astronomical Observatory has discovered a planetary system several thousand light years away. Tomasz Górecki, heading the UW Mediterranean Archaeology Center in Quarna in Egypt, has discovered some very well preserved Coptic manuscripts that possibly date back to the 7th century. Prof. Leonid Hurwicz, a UW graduate, received the Nobel Prize in Economics this year.

A story to tell
The UW did not simply ride into town on the back of its 200 years of tradition. It has gotten to where it is today on the strength of its many outstanding achievements. Having survived partitions and occupations, the UW is like a phoenix that keeps rising from the ashes of wars and insurrections. An architect would perfunctorily sum the place up as a congeries of 17-19th century neo-classical buildings with a neo-baroque gate harking back to 1900, a library building dated 1891-1899, and the Kazimierzowski Palace (1634), originally a royal summer residence.

There is a permanent exhibition of the university on display at Warsaw's Tyszkiewicz-Potocki Palace, 32 Krakowskie Przedmieście St. The exhibition, entitled Alma Mater Varsoviensis, can be found in the palace's Stołowa Hall. The artworks, documents and memorabilia on display have all been donated by other museums or private individuals.

A bronze statue of renowned Polish classical scholar Prof. Tadeusz Zieliński stands alongside busts of other great Polish academics like linguist Samuel Linde, doctor and naturalist Tytus Chałubiński and archeologist Kazimierz Michałowski. Zieliński was awarded honorary doctorates by no fewer than 11 universities.

To begin at the beginning
The Warsaw University belongs to that august group of European and American colleges born during the Enlightenment. It all began Nov. 19, 1816, when Russian czar Alexander I signed a document in St. Petersburg to establish a university in Warsaw. At the time, Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria. The opening ceremony took place May 14, 1818, and Fr. Wojciech Anzelm Szweykowski was appointed president, a post he was to hold until 1830. The university had a full complement of staff by 1820. Within a short time, the UW had 35 departments teaching a wide range of subjects including eastern and ancient languages.

The UW was very progressive by the standards of the day. The UW's department of zoology, founded 1819, was the first in Poland and one of the first in the world. Prof. Michał Szubert, a pioneer in microscopic plant anatomy, founded the Warsaw Botanical Gardens in 1817.

Society of Friends of Sciences
The UW enjoyed the support of the Society of Friends of Sciences. This body brought together Europe's leading scientists, including Poland's top naturalists. Foreign members included Réné Desfontaines from Paris, zoologist Carl Franz von Schreibers and Albrecht Thaer, the renowned German agronomist. The foreign contingent was bolstered in 1829 with the appearance of several well-known scientists including the famous German naturalist and explorer Alexander Humboldt.

UW students took part in the abortive November Uprising against Russian occupation in 1831 and the university was closed in retaliation. The UW's collection of more than 100,000 books and prints together with thousands of coins was carted off to St. Petersburg. The "Great Emigration," a massive emigration of political and intellectual elites from Poland's Russian-controlled "Congress Kingdom," followed in the wake of the crushing of the November Uprising and lasted some 40 years.

A new name, a new language
The university was briefly brought back to life 1862-1869 as the Main School of Warsaw, headed by Józef Mianowski. The school had four departments teaching law and administration, philology and history, mathematics and physics, and medicine. It was closed down in 1870 and replaced with a Russian-language college, the aim being to promote the Russification of Poland. Russian support provided new buildings and more resources. Poles, many of whom belonged to patriotic organizations, made up about 70 percent of the student body.

World War I (1914-1918)
The German occupation authorities permitted Polish colleges to be set up in Warsaw during WW I. The university became one of Poland's first legal national institutions. A handful of 36-53 academics found themselves having to cope with a student body that grew from 1,000 to 4,500 in four years. Most studied law, medicine, and philosophy-which combined the humanities and the natural sciences-and more than 10 percent were women. Patriotic demonstrations and increasing conflicts with the German authorities culminated in a strike in the spring of 1917, and classes were suspended for several months.

The interwar years
Poland put 123 years of foreign partitions behind it on Nov. 11, 1918, forever known as Independence Day, and Warsaw was proclaimed the capital of the reborn nation.

It wasn't long before the UW was up there with the rest of Europe. This was due in no small part to the efforts of the many Polish professors who came here from Russia, Galicia and Western Europe. The UW was Poland's largest university during the early 1930s and had 250 professors and deans, and 10,000 students. The number of departments grew to eight and separate institutes specializing in various academic fields were founded. The university was renamed Józef Piłsudski University in 1935 to honor the Polish military hero and statesman considered largely responsible for independence. The university boasted eight faculties and one school at the time.

World War II (1939-1945)
WW II was unquestionably the university's darkest hour. The German Wehrmacht goose-stepped into Poland in 1939 and promptly closed all the nation's seats of higher learning. The UW campus was converted into barracks and the library was off-limits to everyone except Germans. The UW went underground. Nearly 300 academics and 3,500 students held classes in 1944. The UW lost all its buildings and collections during the war and 63 of its professors were killed.

After the war
The UW reopened in December 1945 with 4,000 students. The first few years were quite liberal but free inquiry was systematically suppressed from the late 1940s onward. During this mercifully short period, professors were appointed primarily for their ideological credentials. This isolated the university internationally and threatened its very existence.

The medical and pharmaceutical departments were merged to create the Medical Academy in 1950. The Christian Academy of Theology and the Academy of Catholic Theology (ATK) grew out of the departments of Evangelical Theology and Catholic Theology four years later. The ATK and the Medical Academy are now independent.

The 1960s were a difficult period for the university with mass demonstrations showing solidarity with the "Prague Spring" or simply demanding freedom. Students and academics were expelled, promising careers were ruined, and many people were driven out of the country. The UW was an oasis of free thought during the communist period and educated a lot of those who reformed the system.

UW by the numbers
The UW has more than 64,500 students and receives almost 40,000 day student applications annually. The school has a staff of over 5,700. This includes 2,945 academic teachers of whom 834 are professors. It offers 76 courses, including interdisciplinary programs, 37 majors and teaches more than 100 specializations in the humanities and mathematical and natural sciences.

The UW is a major beneficiary of EU subsidies. Brussels has helped the university complete eight projects totaling zl.37 million over the last three years. The UW's international standing is evidenced by the fact that it works with some of the world's most prestigious educational institutions. During 2005, the UW worked with more than 155 colleges from 49 countries under direct cooperative agreements and partnered almost 300 schools from other EU countries as part of the Socrates/Erasmus program.

More than 1,300 young people from some 170 countries study at the UW, making the student body quite a cosmopolitan community.

The future
The UW is planning new buildings as well as extensions and renovations of existing ones by 2016 to mark its bicentennial. The departments of Neophilology and Applied Linguistics and East Slavonic Philology, estimated at zl.100 million, are the largest new projects.

The UW is thrashing out the details of the proposed Warsaw Technology Park with the Warsaw Science Consortium and City Hall, and is also planning to create a "Latin Quarter" in conjunction with the city.

The UW has already obtained permits to construct the CENT Modern Technology Center. This will house the departments of physics, biology and chemistry together with a student cultural center and a science building that does not require laboratories.

Urszula Imienińska


Why is it worth studying at the University of Warsaw?

Prof. Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow, president of the University of Warsaw (UW):

There are many reasons, but the most important are the university's high teaching standards and its diverse range of programs. We offer classes in more than 100 majors and specializations. You can study over 50 foreign languages in the school, including all major European languages, among them Catalonian, as well as Japanese, Chinese and Swahili. We have many excellent professors. They are renowned around the world in many fields, for example in astronomy, archaeology, humanities, law and mathematical sciences. We also invite prominent foreign teachers to run lectures and seminars at our university. Various outstanding figures visit us to meet with our students. Examples include U.S. President George W. Bush, Japanese Emperor Akihito, and Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The university also has well equipped laboratories and libraries. The collections of the Warsaw University Library (BUW) and department libraries hold over 5 million volumes in all, and our virtual library is used across Poland.

Some 1,000 UW students go abroad to study for one or two terms as part of projects such as the European Union's Socrates/Erasmus program.

More than 1,300 foreigners have decided to study at the UW so far. We have agreements with many other universities in both Europe and elsewhere, so students nearing graduation can work on their specialization abroad-be it in Europe, Latin America, East Asia or Africa. The opportunities are many. For example, the UW uses an astronomical observatory in Chile and holds archaeological missions in countries such as Peru, Egypt, Syria and Bulgaria.


A Bagful of Nobels

2007: Leonid Hurwicz-Nobel Prize in Economics.
This Russian-born American researcher of Polish ancestry graduated in law from the University of Warsaw in 1938.

1995: Joseph Rotblat-Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for his efforts to reduce the role played by nuclear arms in international politics and to eliminate such arms in the longer run.
Rotblat studied at the UW's Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and obtained a Ph.D. in physics in 1938.
In 1932-1934, he also attended lectures at the UW Department of Humanities.

1980: Czesław Miłosz-Nobel Prize in Literature.
One of the most outstanding Polish poets and writers, Miłosz studied at the UW Department of Law for a year in 1932.
During World War II, he worked as a janitor at the Warsaw University Library.

1978: Menachem Begin-Nobel Peace Prize.
He received it jointly with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for their political efforts for peace in the Middle East.
Begin studied at the UW Department of Law in 1931-1935 where he obtained a master's degree.

1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz-Nobel Prize in Literature.
Sienkiewicz enrolled at the Department of Law in 1866, but then he changed his major twice.
First he moved to the Department of Medicine, and then to the Department of Philology, where he completed his studies without a degree in 1871.