The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; el, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, ''Ethnikó ke Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a

public university A public university or public college is a university or college that is in state ownership, owned by the state or receives significant government spending, public funds through a national or subnational government, as opposed to a private unive ...

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

, Greece."''The EEC’s assessment is that University of Athens is worthy of merit. Educate faculty in the need for QA and evaluation. The successful process of self-evaluation can be replicated. An impartial, genuine, honest, open, effective and constructive strategic planning and communication between the Institution and the state needs to be implemented in order to put in place measures for its longer term viability and tradition of excellence. We conclude by pointing out that the recommendations indicated in our report are intended as ways to improve an already excellent Institution. The culture of excellence in research and teaching that the Institution has established for itself was appreciated by every member of the EEC.''" It has been in continuous operation since its establishment in 1837 and is the oldest higher education institution of the modern Greek state and the first contemporary university in both the Balkan Peninsula and the

Eastern Mediterranean Eastern Mediterranean is a loose definition of the eastern approximate half, or third, of the Mediterranean Sea, often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It typically embraces all of that sea's coastal zones, referring to comm ...

. Today it is one of the largest universities by enrollment in Europe, with over 69,000 registered students. The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is an integral part of the modern Greek academic and intellectual tradition.

History

Founding and expansion

The University of Athens was founded on 3 May 1837 by King Otto of Greece (in Greek, ''Óthon'') and was named in his honour Othonian University (Οθώνειον Πανεπιστήμιον). It was the first university in the liberated Greek state and in the surrounding area of

Southeast Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical subregion of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkans. Sovereign states and territories that are included in the region are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia (a ...

as well. It was also the second academic institution after the Ionian Academy. This fledgling university consisted of four faculties; Theology, Law, Medicine and Arts (which included applied sciences and mathematics). During its first year of operation, the institution was staffed by 33 professors, while courses were attended by 52 students and 75 non-matriculated "auditors". It was first housed in the residence of architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert, on the north slope of the

Acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, ...

, in Plaka, which now houses the museum of the university. In November 1841 the university relocated on the Central Building of the University of Athens, a building designed by Danish architect Christian Hansen. He followed a neoclassical approach, "combining the monument's magnificence with a human scale simplicity" and gave the building its H-shape. The building was decorated by painter Carl Rahl, forming the famous "architectural trilogy of Athens", together with the building of the

National Library of Greece The National Library of Greece ( el, Εθνική Βιβλιοθήκη της Ελλάδος, Ethnikí Vivliothíki tis Elládos) is the main public library of Greece, located in Athens. Founded by Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1832, its mission is to ...

(left of the university) and the building of the Athens Academy (right of the university). Construction began in 1839 in a location to the north of the Acropolis. Its front wing, also known as the Propylaea, was completed in 1842–1843. The rest of the wings' construction, that was supervised at first by Greek architect Lysandros Kaftantzoglou and later by his colleague Anastasios Theofilas, was completed in 1864. The building is nowadays part of what is called the "Athenian Neoclassical Trilogy". Paparrigopoulos

The Othonian University was renamed to National University (Εθνικόν Πανεπιστήμιον) in 1862, following events that forced King Otto to leave the country. A major change in the structure of the university came about in 1904, when the faculty of Arts was divided into two separate faculties: that of Arts (Σχολή Τεχνών) and that of Sciences (Σχολή Επιστημών), the latter consisting of the departments of Physics and Mathematics and the School of Pharmacy. In 1919, a department of chemistry was added, and in 1922 the School of Pharmacy was renamed a department. A further change came about when the School of Dentistry was added to the faculty of medicine. Between 1895 and 1911, an average of 1,000 new students matriculated each year, a number which increased to 2,000 at the end of World War I. This resulted in the decision to introduce entrance examinations for all the faculties, beginning for the academic year 1927–28. Since 1954 the number of students admitted each year has been fixed by the Ministry of Education and Religion, by proposal of the faculties.

Modern history

The University Club building was founded in 1930. Today the building houses the Health Services Office, the Meals Department, the University Club reading rooms, and the Students Cultural Association (POFPA). From 1911 until 1932 the university was separated into the Kapodistrian University (the humanities departments; named after Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first head of state of the independent modern Greek state) and the National University (the science departments). In 1932, the two separate legal entities were merged into the "National and Kapodistrian University of Athens." During the 1960s construction work began on the University Campus in the suburb of

Ilissia Ilisia ( el, Ιλίσια ) is a neighborhood of Athens, Greece, named after the river Ilisos. A portion of the neighborhood, Ano Ilisia (Upper Ilisia), is in Zografou and is near the Theology, Philosophy and Scientific faculties of the University ...

, which houses the Schools of Philosophy, Theology and Sciences. In 2013, the University Senate made the decision to suspend all operations in the wake of the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs cutting 1,655 administrative jobs from universities around the country. In a statement, the University Senate said that "any educational, research and administrative operation of the University of Athens is objectively impossible".

Faculties and departments

The University of Athens is divided into schools, faculties and departments as follows. The naming is nοt consistent in English for historical reasons, but in Greek the largest divisions are generally named "σχολές" (schools) and are divided in "τμήματα" (departments), furthermore subdivided in "τομείς" (faculties). Nomiki building, Athens 2009

The University of Athens also offers an English-taught 4-year undergraduate programme (with tuition) in Archaeology, History, and Literature of Ancient Greece.

Academic evaluation

In 2015, the external evaluation of the institution cited University of Athens as ''Worthy of merit''. An external evaluation of all academic departments in Greek universities was conducted by the Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (HQA) in 2010–14.

Rankings

The University of Athens is considered one of the leading universities of Greece, a leading European regional university and is present in the top universities annual lists. The most recent is the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities of 2019 that listed it in the 219th place out of 12,000 universities worldwide (1st in Greece, 70th in Europe) with very high perspectives regarding the university's openness. It is ranked 401st–500th in '' The Times Higher Education'' (''THE'') annual list. Furthermore, according to the ''

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for th ...

'' annual list it is listed 651st–700th with very high research output. The Shanghai Ranking (''

Academic Ranking of World Universities The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong Universi ...

'') ranked in 2018 the University 301st–400th globally. In 2018 it was listed by the CWTS Leiden Ranking in the 232nd place globally with great publication output in the Biomedical and Health Sciences field. In 2019 the university was situated in the 73rd place worldwide in the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities by citations in Top

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

Profiles. The U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking (USNWR) lists it 279th in the world and 1st in Greece. In the field of Pharmacy and Pharmacology it is listed 101st–150th in the world by QS and 94th by USNWR. The last situates the University 114th in Immunology and 166th in Clinical Medicine.

Campuses

The main campus is at Ano Ilisia, Zografou. There the faculties of Science, Theology and Philosophy are situated. The faculty of Life Sciences is located at Goudi and the faculty of Physical Education and Sports Science is located at Dafni. The faculties of Media, Education, Economics, Law and Public Administration are housed in various buildings near the centre of Athens, along with various administration facilities. University administration was housed initially in a historical neoclassical building near the center of Athens on Panepistimiou Street, but was relocated at the main university campus later. ::

Research

Research in the University of Athens includes almost all research interests. Such research in the university is associated with that conducted by the hospitals and research institutes of the metropolitan area, including the National Research Center for Physical Sciences "Demokritos", the National Hellenic Research Foundation (EIE), the National Observatory of Athens, the

Hellenic Pasteur Institute Hellenic is a synonym for Greek. It means either: *of or pertaining to the Hellenic Republic (modern Greece) or Greek people ( Hellenes, el, Έλληνες) and culture *of or pertaining to ancient Greece, ancient Greek people, culture and civil ...

, the Biomedical Sciences Research Center (BSRC) "Alexander Fleming", the Athens High Performance Computing Laboratory, the National Centre for Marine Research (NCMR) and the Foundation for Biomedical Research of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA). Research conducted in the institutes of the metropolitan area of

accounted for more than 50% of the

ISI ISI or Isi may refer to: Organizations * Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a classical conservative organization focusing on college students * Ice Skating Institute, a trade association for ice rinks * Indian Standards Institute, former name of ...

-indexed scientific publications coming from

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wit ...

. The Department of Informatics and Telecommunications has been ranked continuously among the 100 most important research institutes in the field of Computer Science, according to the ''

'' (''ARWU'').

KEDIVIM

The Centre of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (KEDIVIM; Greek: ) of the University of Athens (UoA) is a separate continuing and professional adult educational unit within University of Athens, at "non-typical education", although it is fully or partially regulated by the state and lead to officially recognised qualifications being considered non-formal education (NFE). It offers short-term courses on-campus and by Distance e-Learning Mode off-campus mediated via real-time electronic means, certified by the EOPPEP - National Organization for the Certification of Qualifications and Vocational Guidance (Greek: ). In Greece,

adult education Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values.Merriam, Sharan B. & Brockett, Ralp ...

continuing education Continuing education (similar to further education in the United Kingdom and Ireland) is an all-encompassing term within a broad list of post-secondary learning activities and programs. The term is used mainly in the United States and Canada. ...

or lifelong learning is offered to students of all adult ages.

Notable alumni

Throughout its history, a sizeable number of University of Athens alumni have become notable in many varied fields, both academic and otherwise. Moreover, two Nobel Prize-winners have studied or taught at Athens, with both their prizes being in

Literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to inclu ...

Politics

Fifteen Greek prime ministers and three Greek presidents ( Konstantinos Karamanlis served as both) have studied at the University of Athens, including Charilaos Trikoupis,

Eleftherios Venizelos Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos ( el, Ελευθέριος Κυριάκου Βενιζέλος, translit=Elefthérios Kyriákou Venizélos, ; – 18 March 1936) was a Greeks, Greek statesman and a prominent leader of the Greek national liberati ...

, Georgios Papandreou, Andreas Papandreou, Konstantinos Karamanlis, Karolos Papoulias, and most recently interim prime minister Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou. Also, Constantine II, the last monarch of Greece, and Nicos Anastasiades, the current president of Cyprus, attended the university. The University of Athens has also been home to a large number of other politicians, such as Dora Bakoyannis,

Kyriakos Mavronikolas Kyriakos Mavronikolas (born 25 January 1955) is a Cypriot Movement for Social Democracy politician. He served as the Cypriot Minister of Defence from 2003 to 2006, and he sat as a Member of the European Parliament for Cyprus from 2009 to 2012, whe ...

, Georgios Alogoskoufis, Fofi Gennimata, and Dimitris Koutsoumpas.

Science

* Gerasimos Danilatos, physicist, inventor of the ESEM * Sophia Frangou, psychiatrist * John P. A. Ioannidis (DSc, 1996 and MD 1990), professor and medical researcher * Fotis Kafatos, biologist *

Michael N. Katehakis Michael N. Katehakis ( el, Μιχαήλ Ν. Κατεχάκης; born 1952) is a Professor of Management Science at Rutgers University. He is noted for his work in Markov decision process, Gittins index, the multi-armed bandit, Markov chains and ...

, applied mathematics and operations research * Nikos Logothetis, neuroscientist *

George Michalopoulos George K. Michalopoulos is a Greek-American pathologist, currently the Chair of the Department of Pathology, Maud L. Menten Professor of Pathology and a Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Education He earned an M.D. at th ...

, professor and medical researcher * Dimitri Nanopoulos, physicist * Georgios Papanikolaou, doctor, inventor of the

Pap test The Papanicolaou test (abbreviated as Pap test, also known as Pap smear (AE), cervical smear (BE), cervical screening (BE), or smear test (BE)) is a method of cervical screening used to detect potentially precancerous and cancerous processes in t ...

* Costas Soukoulis, physicist *

Nikos Sypsas Nikos Sypsas is a Greek academic and medical doctor specialized in infectious diseases from Nafpaktia, Greece. He is primarily known for his participation in the scientific committee of the Greek government for the coronavirus pandemic 2019-20 ...

, medical doctor and infectious disease expert *

Dimitrios Trichopoulos Dimitrios Trichopoulos ( el, Δημήτριος Τριχόπουλος; December 9, 1938 – December 1, 2014), was a Mediterranean Diet expert and tobacco harms researcher. He was Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and Professor of ...

, cancer epidemiologist *

Panayotis Varotsos Panayiotis Varotsos ( el, Παναγιώτης Βαρώτσος; born November 28, 1947 in Patras) is a Greek physicist and former professor in the Department of Physics of the University of Athens, notable for his VAN method to predict earthquak ...

, physicist * Leonidas Zervas, organic chemist *

Zoe Pikramenou Zoe Pikramenou is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Photophysics at the University of Birmingham, where she is the first female professor in the chemistry department. Education and career Pikramenou graduated in 1987 with a B.Sc. in Chemis ...

, inorganic chemist

Literature and philosophy

* Giorgios Seferis, Nobel laureate (1963), poet * Odysseas Elytis, Nobel laureate (1979), poet * Nikos Kazantzakis, writer and philosopher, nine times Nobel nominee *

Helene Ahrweiler Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler FBA (; el, Ελένη Γλύκατζη-Αρβελέρ; born 29 August 1926) is a Greek-French academic Byzantinologist. She is also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Greece. In the 2008 show '' Great Greeks'', she was ...

, byzantinologist * Cornelius Castoriadis, philosopher * Dimitra Fimi, academic and writer * Emmanuel Kriaras, lexicographer and philologist *

Vassilis Rotas Vassilis Rotas (1889–1977) was a Greek politician, author and translator of Shakespeare's dramas from English into Greek. Biography He was born in Chiliomodi on the Peloponnese in 1889 and studied literature at the University of Athens and ...

, author, translator and politician * Stathis Psillos, philosopher of science, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stathis_Psillos

Archaeology

Stylianos Alexiou Stylianos Alexiou ( el, Στυλιανός Αλεξίου, 13 February 1921 – 12 November 2013) was an archaeologist, philologist and university professor. Biography Sylianos Alexiou was born in 1921 in Heraklion, Crete. He came from a learn ...

, archaeologist and philologist * Semni Karouzou, archaeologist and curator * Yannis Sakellarakis, archaeologist * Evi Touloupa, archaeologist and curator

Religion

* Saint

Nectarios of Aegina Nectarios of Aegina ( el, Νεκτάριος Αιγίνης; 1 October 1846 – 8 November 1920), Metropolitan of Pentapolis and Wonderworker of Aegina, is one of the most renowned Greek saints, venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church and officia ...

Ieronymos I of Athens Ieronymos I ( el, Ιερώνυμος Α´, ''Ierōnymos''; Latin: Hieronymus I; English: Jerome I; 1 May 1905 – 15 November 1988) was a Greek monk and theologian, who served as the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece and as such the primate of t ...

, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece * Anastasios of Albania, Archbishop of Albania * Porfirije, Archbishop of Peć, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovci, and Serbian Patriarch *

Demetrios Trakatellis Archbishop Demetrios (born Demetrios Trakatellis; el, Δημήτριος Τρακατέλλης) is a former elder archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Exarch of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He resigned from this posi ...

, Archbishop of America

Other

Christos Christou Christos Christou M.D. is the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Christou is from Greece where he studied medicine before working as a doctor in the UK. He joined MSF and worked as a surgeon in Cameroon, Iraq, and South ...

, International President of

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; pronounced ), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is a humanitarian medical non-governmental organisation (NGO) or charity of French origin known for its projects in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases. ...

Apostolos Santas Apostolos Santas ( el, Απόστολος Σάντας; 22 February 1922 – 30 April 2011), commonly known as Lakis, was a Greek veteran of the Resistance against the Axis Occupation of Greece during World War II, most notable for his particip ...

, Greek veteran of the Resistance against the Axis Occupation of Greece during World War II * Panagiotis Pikrammenos, judge and caretaker prime minister

References

External links

*
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – Official website

Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (HQA)

Kallipos (e-books Greek academic publishing)

Greek Research and Technology Network (GRNET)

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Internal Quality Assurance Unit

Didaskaleio of NKUA University
(Διδασκαλείο Ξένων Γλωσσών) {{DEFAULTSORT:National And Kapodistrian University Of Athens

Education in Athens Athens University Public universities 1837 establishments in Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias