Aix-Marseille, University of

founded in 1409 with faculties of theology, law, and medicine; in 1764 the College Royal de Bourbon, which had been founded by King Henry IV in 1603, was made part of the university as the faculty of arts. Several reorganizations led to the establishment of one university in Aix in 1846 and of another in Marseille in 1854; in 1896 they were merged into the University of Aix-Marseille. The law on the orientation of higher education of Nov. 12, 1968, established two universities.

The University of Aix-Marseille I unites the National Laboratory of Aliphatic Compounds, the Endoume Marine Station, the Marseille Higher School of Physics, the Institute of Statistical Mechanics of Turbulence, the Institute of Fluid Mechanics, the Center of Audiovisual Instruction, the University Literary College, the Institute for the Study of France (for foreigners), the Center of Higher Literary Education, two university technological institutes (one in Marseille and one in Aix), and the Marseille Observatory.

The University of Aix-Marseille II unites the Regional Institute of Labor, the Juridical Institute, and the Center for the Study of Human Relations. It also has institutes of political science; the training of management personnel; criminal law and criminology; juridical, political, and economic research; phyto-pharmacology; pediatrics; the study of pneumonia and tuberculosis; scientific photography; medicine and tropical pharmacology; tropical hygiene and public health; the biometrics of man and vocational guidance; forensic medicine, labor medicine, and industrial hygiene; and the study and medical application of radioactive isotopes.

The prominent French politicians L. Prévot-Paradol and A. Weiss were professors at the University of Aix-Marseille, and the historian F. Mignet and the Nobel Prize poet F. Mistral studied there.

In the 1972 school year the university had more than 21,000 students and 730 instructors, of whom 169 were professors, including such outstanding scholars as M. Fabre (law), A. Gas-taut (medicine), and C. Fehrenbach (astrophysics).