Lyon, University of

one of the largest universities in France.

Its history began in 1809, when faculties of philology, natural sciences, and theology were founded in Lyon. In 1874–75 faculties of medicine and law were opened. All the faculties were consolidated into a university in 1896. In the 1960’s the University of Lyon was divided into two universities. The University of Lyon-1 has the faculty of medicine and pharmacology and the faculty of natural sciences. The former includes institutes of hydrology, therapeutics and climatology, tropical medicine, social medicine, stomatology, audiophonology, cardiovascular diseases, and industrial pharmacology, a medical genetics center, and a school of therapeutic gymnastics. The faculty of natural sciences has departments of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences, biodynamics, psychopedagogy, and nuclear physics, as well as institutes of meteorology and climatology and of finance and insurance, a high school of industrial chemistry, the St. Étienne University Scientific College, a marine biology station, an astronomical observatory, and a scientific research center for mathematics and physics in Beirut.

The University of Lyon-2 is composed of the faculty of law and economic sciences and the faculty of literature and the humanities. The law and economics faculty has institutes of political science, economic research, comparative law, administrative sciences, legal research, labor and social insurance, business administration and management, and research on population and international relations, as well as the Loire Institute of Judicial and Economic Sciences and the St. Etienne University College of Law and Economic sciences. The faculty of literature and the humanities is made up of divisions of psychology, sociology, philosophy, pedagogy, and environment, as well as the University Engineering Institute in Villeurbanne.

In 1972 the two universities had an enrollment of over 22,000 students and employed more than 1,000 instructors, including about 200 professors. There are seven major specialized libraries in the University of Lyon. The university publishes journals and bulletins. V. Grignard, a winner of the Nobel Prize for organic chemistry, worked at the University of Lyon.