Leiden Professors and their fascination

The Universiteit Leiden offers a large variety of subjects and a wide range of research. Over the centuries, great scholars have lectured in Leiden and carried out their research at our university.

In its prime, the University numbered among its members the humanists Justus Lipsius and Josephus Scaliger, the mathematician Willibrord Snellius, the theologians Franciscus Gomarus and Jacob Arminius, and the physician Herman Boerhaave. Those worthy of note during the 19th century include the liberal statesman Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, who wrote the Dutch constitution of 1848 during his years in Leiden, and Matthias de Vries, the founder of Dutch linguistics.

Among the famous members of the 20th century are the physicists Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman, the physiologist Willem Einthoven, the cultural historian Johan Huizinga, author of The waning of the Middle Ages, the legal researcher Eduard Maurits Meijers, whom the Dutch government asked in 1947 to draft a new Civil Code, the astronomers Willem de Sitter and Jan Hendrik Oort, and the physician Jon van Rood.

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