Aarhus University (Danish: Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public university located in Aarhus, Denmark. Founded in 1928, it is Denmark's second oldest university and the largest, with a total of 43,600 enrolled students as of 1 January 2012,after a merger with Aarhus School of Engineering. In most prestigious ranking lists of the world´s best universities, Aarhus University is placed in the top 100. The university belongs to the Coimbra Group of European universities.
Denmark's first professor of sociology was a member of the faculty of Aarhus University (Theodor Geiger, from 1938–1952), and in 1997 Professor Jens Christian Skou received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump. In 2010 Dale T. Mortensen, a Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences together with his colleagues Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides.Aarhus University was founded on 11 September 1928 as Universitetsundervisningen i Jylland ("University Studies in Jutland") with a budget of 33,000 Dkr and an enrollment of 64 students, which rose to 78 during the first semester. The university was founded as a response to the increasing number of students at the University of Copenhagen after World War I. Classrooms were rented from the Technical College and the teaching corps consisted of one professor of philosophy and four associate professors of Danish, English, German and French. Along with Universitets-Samvirket ("The University Association") which consisted of representatives of Aarhus' businesses, organisations and institutions, the municipality of Aarhus had fought since 1921 to have Denmark's next university located in the city.
In 1929, the municipality of Aarhus gave the university land with a landscape of rolling hills. The design of the university buildings and 12 ha campus area was assigned to architects C. F. Møller, Kay Fisker and Povl Stegmann, who won the architectural competition in 1931. The first buildings housed the Departments of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy and were opened on 11 September 1933, the same year the name Aarhus University was first used. The construction of the buildings was funded solely by donations which totaled 935,000 Dkr and the buildings covered an area of 4,190m2. One of the most generous contributors was De Forenede Teglværker i Aarhus ("The United Tileworks of Aarhus") led by director K. Nymark. Forenede Teglværker decided to donate 1 million yellow bricks and tiles worth c. 50,000 Dkr and later decided to extend the donation to all bricks needed to construct the building.the inauguration was celebrated in a tent on campus and attended by King Christian X, Queen Alexandrine, their son Crown Prince Frederick and Prime Minister Stauning together with 1000 other invited guests. On 23 April 1934, Aarhus University was given permission to hold examinations by the king and on 10 October 1935, Professor Dr. phil. Ernst Frandsen was appointed the first rector of the university.Since 1939, C. F. Møller Architects has been responsible for building activities of the university which today has a floor area of 246,000m2 in the University Park alone and a series of buildings outside the Park with a total floor area of 59,000m.
From 1928, Aarhus University offered courses in languages and philosophy, but the students were unable to finish their studies without going to the University of Copenhagen for their final examinations. By request of the Ministry of Education, the Teachers' Association made a draft of how to conduct the final examinations in the humanistic subjects in Aarhus and in the draft, the Association proposed that the faculty was named the Faculty of Humanities by analogy with the corresponding faculties in Uppsala, Lund and Turku. After negotiations between the faculties in Aarhus and Copenhagen, the King declared on 8 May 1935 that the final university examinations could be held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Copenhagen as well as at the Faculty of Humanities in Aarhus. This was the first final examinations Aarhus University was allowed to hold, but on 24 July 1936 the king granted the Faculty of Humanities the right to hold examinations for the magister degree and in 1940 for the PhD.aarhus University had offered courses in basic medical subjects from 1933 and on 10 October 1935 the Faculty of Medicine was formally established. The establishment of a Faculty of Medicine in Aarhus was met with some opposition from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. The professors thought that the state should not establish a new Faculty until the shortcomings of the old one had been solved. In the end, the professors agreed to sign a recommendation for the new Faculty as long as improvements to the old one were not delayed. By 1953, the Faculty of Medicine had been fully built, complete with lectures, professorship chairs, final exams, research facilities and the hospitals of Aarhus had been expanded to meet the demands of clinical training. In 1992, the Faculty of Medicine merged with the dental school and changed its name to Faculty of Health Sciences.
The university established its Faculty of Economics and Law in 1936, but when it offered courses in political science and in psychology (1959 and 1968, respectively), the faculty changed its name to the Faculty of Social Sciences. The faculty had to be funded solely on private donations and once the university demonstrated it had the needed financial means, the Minister of Education recommended the Finance Committee to approve the establishment of the faculty on 27 January 1936 since the state did not have to grant financial support. The Committee approved and by declaration of the king on 5 November 1937, the faculty could hold examinations in economics and law.courses had been offered in theology since 1932 at the Faculty of Humanities, but in 1942 the Faculty of Theology was formally established. Already on 22 June 1928, Reverend Balslev of Aarhus had proposed that Universitetsundervisningen i Aarhus (not yet university) taught basic courses in theology. Though the proposal was greeted by the management, the Faculty of Theology in Copenhagen pointed out that it would take 3 full-time teachers of the New Testament, Old Testament and ecclesiastical history, respectively as well as education in Latin, Greek and Hebrew by the Faculty of Humanities. At this time, Universitetsundervisningen i Aarhus did not have the financial means to meet these criteria so the case was shelved for the time being. In April 1931, the case reopened, this time by Bishop Skat Hoffmeyer who proposed free teaching in the required subjects. The management asked the faculty in Copenhagen if this was acceptable, but because the teaching was free, the faculty saw it as tutoring rather than actual teaching and they neither approved or disproved of such an approach though they did not see it as actual university teaching. The municipality of Aarhus did not aid with funds and the management deemed a request of the state to be futile so they decided to disregard getting the teaching approved and start it anyway under the supervision of Skat Hoffmeyer. On 5 September 1932 Reverend Asmund held the first lecture in theology. This private education in theology continued until the university could hire its own professors in 1938, and in 1942 Aarhus University could at long last establish the Faculty of Theology.In 1938, the university management acknowledged it was time to consider an expansion because of lack of space and the overcrowding of the auditoriums. The solution was not an administration building, as this was not to be built until 1964. Instead a new main building was planned, containing both the different subject areas as well as the administration. The building was to be organized according to a principle of institutes so that teaching and research took place in certain rooms with their own library and study for the professor.
The construction of the building took place during the German occupation of Denmark (1940–45) during World War II, which affected the process in more than one way. No state funds had been involved in the construction of the first university building and a second building for physiology, biochemistry, and a high voltage laboratory, but because the Nazis were against civil use of material and working force, the state contributed to the building. In 1943, the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst, Geheime Feldpolizei and Abwehr set up their regional headquarters in the five student halls of residence on campus. Fearing that the same would happen to the new main building, its completion was delayed. C. F. Møller later wrote that for once there was plenty of time to work on the details of the building, like patterned brickwork, acoustic screens and furniture.the presence of the Gestapo in Aarhus led to multiple arrests of Danish resistance fighters and the resistance movement soon realized they needed outside assistance. On 15 October, the leader of the illegal Danish underground army in Jutland, Niels Bennike, sent the following telegram to London:
Undergrunden i Jyland ved at blive revet op af Gestapo. Vigtigere at få ødelagt arkiver og bevare vore folk end at bevare arkiver og få ødelagt vore folk. Jeg beder indtrængende om, at kollegium 4 og 5, gentager 4 og 5, må blive ødelagt ved luftangreb. Det er de to vestligste, gentager vestligste, bygninger i universitetskomplekset. Haster, gentager haster.("Underground in Jutland getting torn up by the Gestapo. More important to get the archives destroyed and save our people than getting our people destroyed and save the archives. I implore that residence hall 4 and 5, repeat 4 and 5, be destroyed by air strike. They are the two farthest to the west, repeat farthest to the west, buildings of the university complex. Urgent, repeat urgent.")
On 31 October 1944, the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo's headquarters in residence halls 4 and 5, also killing ten civilian workers. 2 Group Bomber Command carried out the bombing by using 25 Mosquito planes. The air strike on the University of Aarhus took place in a heavily populated area and the campus was surrounded by three hospitals. To avoid civilian casualties, the RAF prepared with a model of the campus, shooting at residence halls 4 and 5 with chalk bags. The architect C. F. Møller was in the main building during the air strike but survived and was later dug free from the rubble. The reconstructed main building opened on 11 September 1946.Aarhus University was an independent institution until 1970 and Universitets-Samvirket and the city council had representatives in the management. Hereafter, the university became a state-run institution under the first University Act. Under the next University Act (1992), people outside the university were once again represented in the administration and under 2003 Act, all Danish universities are governed by a university board. This board appoints rector, deans and heads of departments instead of the students. It commenced in January 2004 for the first time and in August 2005 it appointed a rector.
In 1994 the university was a scene of a shooting; 3 people (including the perpetrator) were killed and two more were injured.aarhus University has hosted musical events. The Grateful Dead played here on April 16, 1972. The performance was recorded as part of their Europe '72 tour.in the recent years several higher education institutions have been merged into Aarhus University. Following the Danish University reform of 2006,[citation needed] it merged with the HIH[clarification needed] in Herning and the DPU[clarification needed] in Copenhagen, making the university nationwide and adding 6,000 students. In 2012, Aarhus University's School of Engineering was merged with the university proper, making it Denmarks' largest.
The campus master plan competition was won in 1931 by the collaborative scheme of Danish architects Kay Fisker, C. F. Møller and Povl Stegmann in collaboration with landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen. The design includes a wide variety of buildings over a large space, but each building is composed of the same yellow brick and roofing tile, giving the whole campus a unified look. Construction commenced in 1932 and has continued into the 21st century. The original main building was one of the first Danish functionalist public buildings and has been included in the Ministry of Culture's canon of Danish architecture; it is acknowledged as one of the twelve most meaningful architectural works in the cultural history of Denmark. C. F. Møller and his company, C. F. Møller Architects have continued as architects of the campus ever since. The main buildings of the university are placed in and around a beautiful hilly landscape -Universitetsparken, The University Park, which has been expanded throughout the years. In a harmonic interplay with the hilly park, the yellow buildings form a beautiful campus which has received international recognitions.aarhus University also has a small campus in Copenhagen (approx. 6.000 students), where the university's programmes in education and pedagogic are taught and researched. In the city of Herning there is also a small campus where a few of the university's business, engineering and technology programmes are taught, the AU Herning division.