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Nobel Prize without a School leaving Certificate
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was expelled from school for drawing a caricature of his teacher on the blackboard, shortly before his final school leaving certificate exam. The poor student wanted to at least pass a private school leaving certificate exam. But as luck would have it, the same teacher, who he had caricatured, appeared to assess his papers, and promptly failed him. Who would have ever imagined that a person, who began his academic career on such a unfortunate note, would one day receive the highest academic honor that there is? Wilhelm Conrad could luckily study in Zürich, even without a school leaving certificate. He made his phenomenal discovery while he was a professor at the university in Würzburg: in 1895, he discovered the x-rays that are named after him. He was the first to receive a Nobel Prize for Physics.
Serving Mankind – the Medicine Faculty
The church founded the University of Würzburg 400 years ago as a "Bulwark of Catholicism". The new ideas of the enlightenment period didn’t stop at the gates of the university. From 1734 onwards, the university also opened its doors to non-Catholics. The curriculum was expanded to include a law and medical faculty. Famous physicians such as Döllinger, Schoenlein, von Koelliker, von Virchow and the Siebold family made the university famous.
From X-rays to Klitzing
The university also became well-known for its natural sciences. Not just Wilhelm Conrad, but also his predecessors, Wilhelm Wien and Johannes Stark, as well as the chemists, Emil Fischer and Eduard Buchner picked up Nobel Prizes. The latest among this illustrious breed, to receive the coveted prize, is the physicist Klaus von Klitzig
New institutes
Numerous new institutes have been founded in the hope that further students in Würzburg will make to their way to Sweden in the future to pick up the Nobel honor. That includes the famous Bio-center known throughout Europe, in which biologists, biochemists and biomedics have been poring together over sheets of paper and test tubes since 1993. With chests swollen with pride, physicists talk about the Microstructural laboratory, in which connecting semiconductor structures with measurements of below ten nanometers can be produced. The magnetic resonance tomography laboratory in the field of physics is relatively new and a unique outfit world-wide.
Subjects that are aware of traditions and oriented towards the future
You don’t find successful research and earnest students only in the fields of medicine and the natural sciences. The vast spectrum of study courses ranges from archaeology to zoology, and almost half of the students are enrolled in humanistic fields of study. The university’s trusted and long tradition of medicine and the spirit of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen have certainly contributed to the popularity of the university among medical students. Little wonder then that the medicine faculty with 3,000 students is the biggest single faculty. The course Biomedicine seems to be an equal hot favorite among applicants to the university: 600 students applied for just 24 seats in the first year!
Distributed over the entire city
The respective faculties are scattered all over the city. A few lucky ones are even located in the historical ambience of the princely palace. But even the students close to the city had to strain their legs to bicycle up a hill to get to the university for a while. This is where the departments of natural sciences, the department of philosophy, and the gigantic library are situated. But fortunately, a semester ticket has been introduced recently. So the students can expend their energies on better things.
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Èdua Ferenczy from Rumania studies Geography at Würzburg University:
'In the exam I repeated my prof's ideas, but he wanted to read about my own ideas.' (German)
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Anne Gemminger from France came to Würzburg as part of the ERASMUS programme:
'Now I have a job looking after foreign students.' (German)
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