Editing Leiden University (section)

==History==

===Foundation and early history===
[[File:William_the_Silent_16th_century.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[William the Silent]], founder of the university, in the 16th century.]]
[[File:Academia Leidensis (cropped).jpg|thumb|The academy building of Leiden University in 1614.]]
[[File:Anatomical theatre Leiden.jpg|thumb|[[Leiden anatomical theatre]]]]

In 1575, the emerging [[Dutch Republic]] did not have universities in its northern heartland. The only other university in the [[Habsburg Netherlands]] was the [[Old University of Leuven|University of Leuven]] located in an area under firm Spanish control. [[William the Silent|Prince William]] founded Leiden University to give the Northern Netherlands an institution that could educate its citizens in religion and provide the government with educated men in all fields.<ref name="WOI">{{cite book| last = Otterspeer| first = Willem| title = Groepsportret met Dame: de Leidse universiteit, 1575–1672| year = 2000| isbn = 978-90-351-2240-6 |publisher=[[Uitgeverij Prometheus|Bert Bakker]] }}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Aldersey-Williams |first=Hugh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7n7VDwAAQBAJ |title=Dutch Light: Christiaan Huygens and the Making of Science in Europe |date=2020-09-03 |publisher=[[Pan Macmillan]] |isbn=978-1-5098-9332-4 |language=en}}</ref> It is said the choice fell on Leiden as a reward for the heroic [[Siege of Leiden|defence of Leiden]] against Spanish attacks in 1574. The name of [[Philip II of Spain]], William's adversary, appears on the official foundation certificate as he was still the ''de jure'' [[count of Holland]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Foundation documents |url=https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/dossiers/history-of-leiden-university/foundation-documents |access-date=2023-07-07 |website=Leiden University |language=en}}</ref> Philip II forbade all his subjects to study in Leiden. 

The new institution was initially located in the Convent of Saint Barbara, then moved to the Faliede Bagijn Church in 1577 (now the location of the university museum) and in 1581 to a former convent of [[Cistercian nuns]], a site which it still occupies, though the original building was destroyed by a fire in 1616.<ref name="WOI" />

Leiden University's reputation was created in part by the presence of scholars such as [[Justus Lipsius]], [[Joseph Justus Scaliger|Joseph Scaliger]], [[Franciscus Gomarus]], [[Grotius|Hugo Grotius]], [[Jacobus Arminius]], [[Daniel Heinsius]], and [[Gerhard Johann Vossius]] within fifty years of its founding. By the 1640s, over five hundred students were enrolled from all across Europe, making it the largest Protestant university.<ref>{{cite book |first=H. |last=Schnappen |title=Niederländische Universitäten und deutsches Geistesleben von der Gründung der Universität Leiden bis ins späte 18. Jahrhundert |location=Münster |year=1960 |series=Neue Münstersche Beiträge zur Geschichtsforschung |volume=6 |oclc=3783378 }}</ref><ref name=":0" /> [[Baruch Spinoza]] discovered Descartes's work partly at Leiden University,<ref>{{Citation |last=Kambouchner |first=Denis |title=Spinoza and Descartes |date=2021-04-15 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119538349.ch6 |work=A Companion to Spinoza |pages=56–67 |editor-last=Melamed |editor-first=Yitzhak Y. |access-date=2023-07-07 |edition=1 |publisher=[[Wiley (publisher)|Wiley]] |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781119538349.ch6 |isbn=978-1-119-53834-9|s2cid=241336237 }}</ref> which he visited for periods of study multiple times.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Spinoza, Benedict De {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/spinoza/ |access-date=2023-07-07 |language=en-US}}</ref> In the 18th century, [[Jakob Gronovius|Jacobus Gronovius]], [[Herman Boerhaave]], [[Tiberius Hemsterhuis]], and [[David Ruhnken]] were among the renowned academics of the university.

In 1896, the [[Zeeman effect]] was discovered at the institution by [[Pieter Zeeman]] and shortly afterward explained by [[Hendrik Antoon Lorentz]].<ref>A.J. Kox, [https://akox.nl/wp-content/uploads/EPJPaper.pdf ''The discovery of the electron: II. The Zeeman effect''], Eur. J. Phys. '''18''', 139–144 (1997).</ref> In the world's first university low-temperature laboratory, Professor [[Heike Kamerlingh Onnes]] achieved a temperature only one degree above [[absolute zero]]. In 1908, he was also the first to succeed in [[Liquid helium|liquifying helium]] and has played a role in the discovery of [[superconductivity]] in metals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Nobel Prize in Physics 1913 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/facts/ |access-date=2023-07-07 |website=[[NobelPrize.org]] |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Modern day===
[[File:Leiden 1610.jpg|thumb|Leiden University Library in 1610]]

The [[Leiden University Library|University Library]] has more than 5.2 million books and fifty thousand journals. It also has collections of Western and Oriental [[Manuscript|manuscripts]], printed books, archives, prints, drawings, photographs, maps, and [[Atlas|atlases]]. It houses the world's largest collections on [[Indonesia]] and [[Caribbean|the Caribbean]], collected by the [[Leiden University Library#Scaliger Institute|Scaliger Institute]] which studies various aspects of knowledge transmissions and ideas through texts and images from antiquity to the present day. In 2005, the manuscript of [[Albert Einstein|Einstein]] on the quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas (the [[Einstein-Bose condensation]]) was discovered in one of Leiden's libraries.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4170212.stm BBC NEWS | Europe | Student unearths Einstein paper<!-- Bot generated title -->].</ref>

==== Partnerships ====
In 2012 Leiden entered into a strategic alliance with [[Delft University of Technology]] and [[Erasmus University Rotterdam]] for the universities to increase the quality of their research and teaching. The university is also the unofficial home of the [[Bilderberg Group]], a meeting of high-level political and economic figures from North America and Europe. Leiden University partnered with [[Duke University School of Law]] starting in 2017 to run a joint summer program on global and transnational law from its Hague campus.