With more than 36,000 students from about 130 nations, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) is one of the ten largest universities in Germany. As a comprehensive university, JGU combines almost all academic disciplines under one roof, including the Mainz University Medical Center, the School of Music, and the Mainz Academy of Arts. This is a unique feature in the German academic landscape. Some 2,900 academics, including 480 professors, teach and conduct research at JGU’s more than 150 departments, institutes, and clinics.
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz is proud to be a research institution of national and international recognition, particularly strong in the field of materials science, earth system science, nuclear and particle physics, translational medicine, and media and cultural studies. In September 2011, JGU submitted its definite proposals for one graduate school, three clusters of excellence, and its institutional strategy THE GUTENBERG SPIRIT: MOVING MINDS – CROSSING BOUNDARIES to the Excellence Initiative by the German Federal and State Governments.
Mainz University is also characterized by its sophisticated large-scale equipment such as the TRIGA light water research reactor of its Institute of Nuclear Chemistry or the key-down electron accelerator MAMI (Mainz Microtron) of the Institute of Nuclear Physics. These facilities attract researchers from all over the world to come to JGU for research.
Mainz University currently counts 145 subjects on offer, organized in 119 Bachelor’s and 96 Master’s programs of courses. With these, the University covers all academic disciplines of a comprehensive university. JGU emphasizes the value of research-oriented teaching, i.e. the combination of excellent research and teaching, and it is known for the incorporation of research content into student curricula so as to introduce its students to research topics and strategies very early on to enable them to develop research habits themselves.
Almost all JGU faculties, departments, institutes, and other institutions are located on a single campus in close vicinity to Mainz city center, which is unique among German universities of comparable size. The JGU campus also houses four partner research institutions conducting cutting-edge research, student housing, and a number of child-care facilities. The Mainz University Medical Center is concentrated on its own campus in short distance to the JGU campus.
Being the only comprehensive university in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz lives the notion of the civic university closely collaborating with the community it is part of. This comprises in particular the areas of life-long learning, knowledge exchange and technology transfer, and the interface between university and school.
JGU was founded in 1477, just a few years after the death of its namesake – Johannes Gutenberg, the famous inventor of movable type printing. It was closed under Napoleon around 1800 and reopened in 1946 by the French forces based in Germany after World War II. The University remains true to the example of Johannes Gutenberg: furthering and implementing innovative ideas, using knowledge to improve the living conditions of people and their access to education and science, and encouraging people to overcome anticipated as well as actual boundaries wherever possible.