Kraków, University of

(Jagiellonian University), the oldest university in Poland and one of the first state universities in Central Europe. It is located in Kraków.

Founded in 1364 by Casimir the Great, it was reorganized by Wladyslaw Jagietto (after whom it was named) on the model of the University of Paris. In the late 15th and early 16th century science and scholarship flourished at the university. It was the only institution of higher learning in Poland, with faculties of theology, law, medicine, and the liberal arts. The university’s greatest achievements at that time were in mathematics and the natural sciences. Its students included not only Poles, but also Czechs, Germans, and Hungarians. Outstanding Polish humanist scholars, writers, and poets taught and studied at the university, as well as the mathematician Wojciech of Brudzew, N. Copernicus, and the astronomer J. Sniadecki. In the mid-16th century an ecclesiastical and scholastic outlook began to dominate teaching at the university. In 1780 the progressive public figure and writer Hugo Kottataj introduced major reforms, notably the teaching of the natural and exact sciences using a botanical garden, scientific collections, laboratories (chemistry, physics, and astronomy), and a university clinic. Polish replaced Latin as the language of instruction.

During the fascist occupation (1939–1944), the university was closed, and many professors and instructors were arrested. In 1942 the university organized underground classes. After the liberation of Kraków, the university at once reopened.

In 1971–72 the university had faculties of law, philosophy and history, philology, mathematics and chemistry, biology, and geography. It had an enrollment of more than 9,000 students and a staff of about 300 professors and instructors. The library, founded in 1364, contained more than 1 million volumes in 1972.