Facts and Figures about the University
Since 2019 we are one of eleven German Universities of Excellence. We have six Clusters of Excellence - more than any other funded university. In the last decades, we have produced more Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists than any other German university. Around 31,500 students study with us in around 200 subject areas.
Excellence Strategy and Collaborative Reseach
- 6 Clusters of Excellence
- University of Excellence since 2019
- 13 Collaborative Research Centres
- 10 Research Units
- 5 Research Training Groups
- 12 BMBF Collaborative Research Projects
- 69 ERC Grants (including completed projects)
- 23 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prizes (including emeriti und alumni)
Studies and Teaching
- 31,501 students (of which about 4,843 are from abroad)
- 6,575 doctoral students (of which about 1,789 are from abroad)
- 226 different academic disciplines and degree programs
- over 4,2285 graduates per year
Last updated: December 2024 (preliminary numbers)
Employees and Finances
- 699 professors1
- 5,399 research staff1
- 1,988 administrative and technical staff2
- 835.5 million euros budget volume
- 204.9 million euros in third-party research funding
1 including not Faculty of Medicine
2 Faculty of Medicine and Clinics not included
Last updated: December 2024 (preliminary numbers)
6
Clusters of Excellence
31,444
Students
7
Faculties
Nobel Prize Laureates and Fields Medalists
The University of Bonn has produced more Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners than any other German university in the past few decades. The only two German winners of the Fields Medal are professors at the University of Bonn.
Nobel Prize Laureate Reinhard Selten
Reinhard Selten (1930-2016) was an important economist and mathematician. He was a professor at the University of Bonn from 1984 and founder of the Laboratory for Experimental Economics (BonnEconLab). Together with John Nash and John Harsanyi, he was the first and so far only German to receive the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 1994 for his groundbreaking contributions to game theory.
Nobel Prize Laureate Wolfgang Paul
Wolfgang Paul (1913-1993) was one of the leading German physicists in the second half of the 20th century. From 1952 he was professor at the University of Bonn and built the first European electron synchrotron, which was later expanded to today's accelerator ELSA. In 1989 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the "ion trap".
Fields Medalist Peter Scholze
Peter Scholze (born 1987) is regarded worldwide as an exceptional mathematical talent. In 2016 he, who had already studied in Bonn, was appointed by the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn as the youngest professor in Germany at the age of 24. After a series of high-level awards, the arithmetic-algebraic geometry expert received the Fields Medal in 2018.
Fields Medalist Gerd Faltings
Gerd Faltings (born 1958) is a world-renowned mathematician. The scientist researching in the field of number theory and algebraic geometry was the first German ever to receive the Fields Medal. From 1995 until 2023, he was the director at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and part of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Bonn.
Infrastructure - Your turn to guess!
Two! The main building of the university is the baroque residence palace of the former electors of Cologne. It has belonged to the newly founded University since 1818 and today houses the Faculty of Arts and the faculties of theology. The Poppelsdofer Castle at the other end of the Poppelsdorfer Allee was called Caslte Clemensruh and used to serve as the Electors as a pleasure palace and summer residence. Today it houses biological and geoscientific subjects.
A proud 67 of our buildings are listed and protected as historic monuments.
There are around 5,000,000 volumes. But we haven't counted them that exactly yet.
The University of Bonn has annual electricity consumption of around 52,000-megawatt hours - and 100% green electricity.