TU Wien () is a public research university in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. The university's teaching and research are focused on

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, and

natural science Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

s. It currently has about 28,100 students (29% women), eight faculties, and about 5,000 staff members (3,800 academics).

History

The institution was founded in 1815 by Emperor Francis I of Austria as the '' k.k. Polytechnisches Institut'' (). The first rector was Johann Joseph von Prechtl. It was renamed the ''Technische Hochschule'' () in 1872. In 1975, it was renamed ''Technische Universität Wien'' ().

Academic reputation

As a

university of technology An institute of technology (also referred to as technological university, technical university, university of technology, polytechnic university) is an institution of tertiary education that specializes in engineering, technology, applied science ...

, TU Wien covers a wide spectrum of scientific concepts from abstract pure research and the fundamental principles of science to applied technological research and partnership with industry. TU Wien is ranked #190 by the

QS World University Ranking The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with ''Times Hig ...

, #406 by the Center of World University Rankings, and it is positioned among the best 251-300 higher education institutions globally by the

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', often referred to as the THE Rankings, is the annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli Symon ...

. The computer science department has been consistently ranked among the top 100 in the world by the QS World University Ranking and The Times Higher Education World University Rankings respectively.

Organization

TU Wien has eight faculties led by deans: Architecture and Planning, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Mathematics and Geoinformation, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Physics. The university is led by the Rector and four Vice Rectors (responsible for Research, Academic Affairs, Finance as well as Human Resources and Gender). The Senate has 26 members. The University Council, consisting of seven members, acts as a supervisory board.

Research

Development work in almost all areas of technology is encouraged by the interaction between basic research and the different fields of engineering sciences at TU Wien. Also, the framework of cooperative projects with other universities, research institutes and business sector partners is established by the research section of TU Wien. TU Wien has sharpened its research profile by defining competence fields and setting up interdisciplinary collaboration centres, and clearer outlines will be developed. Research focus points of TU Wien are introduced as computational science and engineering, quantum physics and quantum technologies, materials and matter, information and communication technology and energy and environment. The EU Research Support (EURS) provides services at TU Wien and informs both researchers and administrative staff in preparing and carrying out EU research projects.

Notable faculty and alumni

Adolph Giesl-Gieslingen Adolph Giesl-Gieslingen (7 September 1903 – 11 February 1992) was an Austrian locomotive designer and engineer. Giesl-Gieslingen was born in 1903 in Trient, Tirol, and studied at the Technical College in Vienna. In 1924 he published a technica ...

(1903–1992), Austrian locomotive designer and engineer *

Alexander Meissner Alexander Meissner (September 14, 1883 – January 3, 1958) was an Austrian engineer and physicist. He was born in Vienna and died in Berlin. His field of interest was: antenna design, amplification and detection advanced the development of rad ...

(1883 – 1958), Austrian engineer and physicist, co-inventor of the

Electronic oscillator An electronic oscillator is an electronic circuit that produces a periodic, oscillating or alternating current (AC) signal, usually a sine wave, square wave or a triangle wave, powered by a direct current (DC) source. Oscillators are found ...

Alfred Preis Alfred Preis (February 2, 1911 – March 29, 1994) was an Austrian-born American architect best known for designing the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Early years in Austria Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, Preis spent his early archite ...

(1911–1993), designer of the

USS Arizona Memorial The USS ''Arizona'' Memorial, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and commemorates the events of that day. The ...

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...

* Benno Mengele (1898–1971), Austrian electrical engineer *

Camillo Sitte Camillo Sitte (17 April 1843 – 16 November 1903) was an Austrian architect, painter and urban theorist whose work influenced urban planning and land use regulation. Today, Sitte is best remembered for his 1889 book, ''City Planning According to ...

(1843-1903), Austrian architect * Christian Andreas Doppler (1803–1853), Austrian mathematician and physicist * Edmund Hlawka (1916-2009), Austrian mathematician *

Edo Šen Edo Šen (born Edo Schön; 1877–1949) was a Croatian Jewish architect notable for creating the foundation of the modern Croatian architecture. Early life Šen was born in Zagreb on 10 March 1877. After high school graduation in 1894, he ...

(1877–1949), Croatian architect * Elfriede Tungl (1922-1981), civil engineer, first Austrian woman to earn a doctorate in civil engineering, in 1973 became the first female associate professor at TU Wien. * Ernst Hiesmayr (1920-2006), architect, artist and former rector of TU Wien *

Ferdinand Piëch Ferdinand Karl Piëch (; 17 April 1937 – 25 August 2019) was an Austrian business magnate, engineer, and executive who held the positions of chairman of the executive board (''Vorstandsvorsitzender'') of the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002 ...

(1937-2019), Austrian

business magnate A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

, engineer and executive who was the chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen Group *

Ferenc Krausz Ferenc Krausz (born 17 May 1962) is a Hungaro-Austrian physicist working in Attosecond physics, attosecond science. He is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and a professor of experimental physics at the Ludwig Maximilian U ...

(born 1962), Hungarian–Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 * Franz Pitzinger (1858–1933), Constructor General of the Austrian Navy * Gottfried Ungerboeck (1940), inventor of

trellis modulation Trellis coded modulation (TCM) is a modulation scheme that transmits information with high efficiency over band-limited channels such as telephone lines. Gottfried Ungerboeck invented trellis modulation while working for IBM in the 1970s, and fi ...

, IBM Fellow * Günter Blöschl (born 1961), Austrian hydrologist * Hannspeter Winter (1941-2006), Austrian plasma physicist *

Heinz Zemanek Heinz Zemanek (actually Heinrich Josef Zemanek) (1 January 1920 – 16 July 2014) was an Austrian computer pioneer who led the development, from 1954 to 1958, of one of the first complete transistorised computers on the European continent. The co ...

(1920-2014), Austrian computer pioneer *

Hellmuth Stachel Hellmuth Stachel (born October 6, 1942, in Graz, Austria) is an Austrian mathematician, a professor of geometry at the Technical University of Vienna, who is known due to his contributions to geometry, kinematics and computer-aided design. Biog ...

(born 1942), Austrian mathematician *

Herman Potočnik Herman Potočnik (pseudonym Hermann Noordung; 22 December 1892 – 27 August 1929) was an Austro-Hungarian Army officer, electrical engineer and astronautics theorist. He is regarded as an early theorist of modern space flight and is remembered m ...

(1892–1929), Slovene space pioneer * Hermann Knoflacher (born 1940), Austrian engineer * Hubert Petschnigg (1913–1997), architect (completed his studies at TU Graz) * Hugo Ehrlich (1879–1936), Croatian architect * Ignaz Sowinski (1858–1917), architect * Ina Wagner (born 1946), Austrian physicist, sociologist, professor of computer science 1987 – 2011, TU's second ever female professor * Ingeborg Hochmair (born 1953), electrical engineer, developed the first microelectronic, multi-channel

cochlear implant A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted Neuroprosthetics, neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for imp ...

* Irfan Skiljan, author of the image viewer software

Irfanview IrfanView () is an image viewer, editor, organiser and converter program for Microsoft Windows. It can also play video and audio files, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial ...

* Jörg Streli (1940–2019), Austrian architect *

Karl Gölsdorf Karl Gölsdorf (8 June 1861 – 18 March 1916) was an Austrian engineer and locomotive designer. Early life Karl Gölsdorf was born on 8 June 1861 in Vienna, the son of Louis Adolf Gölsdorf. Even as a schoolboy he was introduced to locomotive ...

(1861–1916), Austrian engineer and locomotive designer *

Leon Kellner Leon Kellner (; 17 April 18595 December 1928) was an English lexicographer, grammarian, and Shakespearian scholar. He was also a political activist and a promoter of Zionism. Early life and education Leon Kellner was born in Tarnów, Austrian Em ...

(1859–1928), grammarian, Shakespearean, and Zionist * Marie-Therese Hohenberg (born 1972), Austrian architect *

Milan Vidmar Milan Vidmar (; 22 June 1885 – 9 October 1962) was a Slovenian electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, and writer. He was among the top dozen chess players in the world from 1910 to 1930 and in 1950, was among the inaugural recip ...

(1885-1962), Slovene electrical engineer *

Milutin Milanković Milutin Milanković (sometimes Anglicisation of names, anglicised as Milutin Milankovitch; sr-Cyrl, Милутин Миланковић, ; 28 May 1879 – 12 December 1958) was a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, climatologist, geophysics, geo ...

(1879–1958), Serbian geophysicist and civil engineer * Ottó Titusz Bláthy (1860–1939), Hungarian mechanical engineer *

Paul Eisler Paul Eisler (3 August 1907 – 26 October 1992) was an Austrian inventor born in Vienna. Among his innovations were the printed circuit board. In 2012, ''Printed Circuit Design & Fab'' magazine named its Hall of Fame after Eisler. Early life and ...

(1907–1992), inventor of the

printed circuit A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a laminated sandwich structure of conductive and insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes and other features (similar to wires on a flat surface) ...

* Paul Schneider-Esleben (1915–2005), visiting professor of architecture * Peter Schattschneider (born 1950), Austrian physicist * Peter Skalicky (born 1941), rector of TU Wien from 1991 to 2011 *

Richard von Mises Richard Martin Edler von Mises (; 19 April 1883 – 14 July 1953) was an Austrian scientist and mathematician who worked on solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, statistics and probability theory. He held the position of ...

(1883–1953), scientist *

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

(1861-1925), Austrian philosopher and transdisciplinary researcher * Rudolph Michael Schindler (1887–1953), early Modern architect * Siegfried Becher (1806–1873), professor of economics * Silke Bühler-Paschen, professor of physics * Tillman Gerngross, Professor of Engineering at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...

, leading entrepreneur and bioengineer, founder of GlycoFi and Adimab * Ulrike Diebold (born 1961), Austrian–American physicist, vice president of the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

* Viktor Kaplan (1876–1934), inventor of the

Kaplan turbine The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to a ...

Vinzenz Bronzin Vinzenz Bronzin (born 1872 in Rovigno – died 1970 in Trieste) was an Italian mathematics professor, known today for an early (rediscovered) option pricing formula, similar to, and predating, the Black–Scholes 1973 formula; he also provided a ...

(1872-1970), Italian mathematics professor, and pioneering finance theorist * Yordan Milanov (1867–1932), one of the leading Bulgarian architects from the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century * Zvonimir Richtmann (1901–1941),

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n physicist, philosopher, politician and publicist

Library

TU Wien Bibliothek, the university library, was founded in 1815. The main library building was designed by the architects Justus Dahinden, , , , and partners. Completed in 1987, it features owl sculptures by the Swiss artist Bruno Weber. The main library has six floors of open access areas and reading rooms, with around 700 study desks.

Sports

The university hosted the

IFIUS IFIUS (International Federation for Interuniversity Sport) was a democratic non-profit organisation whose main objective was to organise the yearly World Interuniversity Games, in which teams of students from different universities and colleges wor ...

World Interuniversity Games The World Interuniversity Games is an international sports event, which was organised by IFIUS (International Federation for Interuniversity Sport) each year in October. It is currently organised by Committee Panathlon Clubs of Universities, after I ...

in October 2007.

Notes and references

External links

*
Continuing Education Center – TU Wien
(MBA programs, MSc programs, certified)
Curricula
(fields of study and courses)
TISS
Information System (e.g. links to Publications Database)
TU Wien on Youtube
(English playlist) {{DEFAULTSORT:TU Wien TU Wien Universities and colleges in Vienna Educational institutions established in 1815 Engineering universities and colleges in Austria 1815 establishments in the Austrian Empire