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The University of Copenhagen was founded on 1 June 1479 and is the oldest university in Denmark. In 1475, Christian I of Denmark received a papal bull from Pope Sixtus IV with permission to establish a university in Denmark. The bull was issued on 19 June 1475 as a result of the visit to Rome by Christian I's wife, Dorothea of Brandenburg, Queen of Denmark.
On 4 October 1478 Christian I of Denmark issued a royal decree by which he officially established the University of Copenhagen. In this decree, Christian I set down the rules and laws governing the university. The royal decree elected magistar Peder Albertsen as vice chancellor of the university, and the task was his to employ various learned scholars at the new university and thereby establish its first four faculties: theology, law, medicine and philosophy. The royal decree made the University of Copenhagen enjoy royal patronage from its very beginning. Furthermore, the university was explicitly established as an autonomous institution, giving it a great degree of juridical freedom. As such, the University of Copenhagen was to be administered without royal interference, and it was not subject to the usual laws governing the Danish people.
The University of Copenhagen was dissolved in about 1531 as a result of the spread of Protestantism. It was re-established in 1537 by King Christian III after the Lutheran Reformation. The king charged Johannes Bugenhagen, who came from Wittenberg to Copenhagen to take up a chair of theology, with the drawing up of a new University Charter. The resulting Charter was issued in 1539. Between 1675 and 1788, the university introduced the concept of degree examinations. An examination for theology was added in 1675, followed by law in 1736. By 1788, all faculties required an examination before they would issue a degree.
In 1807, most of the university's buildings were heavily damaged during the British bombardment of Copenhagen. By 1836, however, the new main building of the university was inaugurated amid extensive building that continued until the end of the century. The University Library (now a part of the Royal Library), the Zoological Museum, the Geological Museum, the Botanic Garden with greenhouses, and the Technical College were also established during this period.
Between 1842 and 1850, the faculties at the university were restructured. Starting in 1842, the University Faculty of Medicine and the Academy of Surgeons merged to form the Faculty of Medical Science, while in 1848 the Faculty of Law was reorganised and became the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Political Science. In 1850, the Faculty of Mathematics and Science was separated from the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1845 and 1862 Copenhagen co-hosted Nordic student meetings with Lund University.
The first female students, Nielsine Nielsen and Johanne Marie Gleerup were enrolled at the University on the medical programme. The university underwent explosive growth between 1960 and 1980. The number of students rose from around 6,000 in 1960 to about 26,000 in 1980, with a correspondingly large growth in the number of employees. Buildings built during this time period include the new Zoological Museum, the Hans Christian Ørsted and August Krogh Institutes, the campus centre on Amager Island, and the Panum Institute.
The new university statute instituted in 1970 involved democratisation of the management of the university. It was modified in 1973 and subsequently applied to all higher education institutions in Denmark. The democratisation was later reversed with the 2003 university reforms. Further change in the structure of the university from 1990 to 1993 made a Bachelor's degree programme mandatory in virtually all subjects.
Also in 1993, the law departments broke off from the Faculty of Social Sciences to form a separate Faculty of Law. In 1994, the University of Copenhagen designated environmental studies, north–south relations, and biotechnology as areas of special priority according to its new long-term plan. Starting in 1996 and continuing to the present, the university planned new buildings, including for the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Humanities at Amager (Ørestaden), along with a Biotechnology Centre. By 1999, the student population had grown to exceed 35,000, resulting in the university appointing additional professors and other personnel.
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In 2003, the revised Danish university law removed faculty, staff and students from the university decision process, creating a top-down control structure that has been described as absolute monarchy, since leaders are granted extensive powers while being appointed exclusively by higher levels in the organization.
In 2005, the Center for Health and Society (Center for Sundhed og Samfund – CSS) opened in central Copenhagen, housing the Faculty of Social Sciences and Institute of Public Health, which until then had been located in various places throughout the city. In May 2006, the university announced further plans to leave many of its old buildings in the inner city of Copenhagen, an area that has been home to the university for more than 500 years. The purpose of this has been to gather the university's many departments and faculties on three larger campuses in order to create a bigger, more concentrated and modern student environment with better teaching facilities, as well as to save money on rent and maintenance of the old buildings. The concentration of facilities on larger campuses also allows for more inter-disciplinary cooperation; for example, the Departments of Political Science and Sociology are now located in the same facilities at CSS and can pool resources more easily.In January 2007, the University of Copenhagen merged with the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Science. The two universities were converted into faculties under the University of Copenhagen, and were renamed as the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In January 2012, the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the veterinary third of the Faculty of Life Sciences merged with the Faculty of Health Sciences forming the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences – and the other two thirds of the Faculty of Life Sciences were merged into the Faculty of Science.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Copenhagen, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5