As of October 2020,[update] among its notable alumni, faculty and researchers are 11 Nobel Laureates, 5 Fields Medalists, 12 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners as well as some of the most gifted minds in Natural science, e.g. August Kekulé, Heinrich Hertz and Justus von Liebig; Eminent mathematicians, such as Karl Weierstrass, Felix Klein, Friedrich Hirzebruch and Felix Hausdorff; Major philosophers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Jürgen Habermas; German poets and writers, for example Heinrich Heine, Paul Heyse and Thomas Mann; Painters, like Max Ernst; Political theorists, for instance Carl Schmitt and Otto Kirchheimer; Statesmen, viz.

Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman; economists, like Walter Eucken, Ferdinand Tönnies and Joseph Schumpeter; and furthermore Prince Albert, Pope Benedict XVI and Wilhelm II.

King Frederick William III of Prussia thereafter decreed the establishment of a new university in the new province (German: den aus Landesväterlicher Fürsorge für ihr Bestes gefaßten Entschluß, in Unsern Rheinlanden eine Universität zu errichten) on 18 October 1818.

The Carlsbad Decrees, introduced on 20 September 1819 led to a general crackdown on universities, the dissolution of the Burschenschaften and the introduction of censorship laws.

One victim was the author and poet Ernst Moritz Arndt, who, freshly appointed university professor in Bonn, was banned from teaching.

The Rhine University was thus nameless until 1840, when the new King of Prussia, Frederick William IV gave it the official name Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.

176 of Die Preussischen Universitäten, which states a cabinet order on 28 June 1828 gave the university the following name: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität.

The Jewish mathematician Felix Hausdorff was expelled from the university in 1935 and committed suicide after learning about his impending deportation to a concentration camp in 1942.

The Hofgarten, a large park in front of the main building is a popular place for students to meet, study and relax.

[10] The Akademisches Kunstmuseum (English: 'Academic Museum of Antiquities') was founded in 1818 and has one of the largest collections of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the world.

Other directors of the museum were Georg Loeschcke (from 1889 to 1912), Franz Winter (from 1912 to 1929), Richard Delbrück (from 1929 to 1940), Ernst Langlotz (from 1944 to 1966), Nikolaus Himmelmann (from 1969 to 1994) and Harald Mielsch (since 1994).

Strong fields as identified by the university are mathematics, physics, law, economics, neuroscience, medical genetics, chemical biology, agriculture, Asian and Oriental studies and Philosophy and Ethics.

Today, the faculty has its scientific focus in the areas of "Agrar Systems Sensing Analysis and Management", "Food and Nutrition" and "Enlightenment of genetically determined metabolic functions in crops, farm animals and humans using molecular biological methods" (From Molecules to Function: Crop - Livestock - Human).

[23] The Informatics Section includes the Institute of Computer Science and the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it).

[27] Together with the University of Cologne, Bonn hosts the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School of Physics and Astronomy, which is funded by Excellence Initiatives.

In addition, the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig and the Botanical Gardens are associated with the Department of Biology as a cooperating institute.

The DFG Cluster of Excellence "ImmunoSensation: The Immune System as a Sensory Organ" approved in 2012 is largely located at the Faculty of Medicine.

Studentenwerke provide public services for the economic, social, medical and cultural support for students enrolled at German universities.

The national association includes multiple stakeholders of German society and collaborates with other students' affairs organizations worldwide.

The highlight is the annual participation in the German university championships, where the Bonn rowers have repeatedly qualified for the respective final in recent years.

This will become a central research hub with lecture halls, a library and seminar rooms for the Economics department, the Clusters of Excellence, the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, HPCA, and DiCe.

It will also accommodate the library, offices and lecture hall for the classical archaeology department, including providing access for teaching purposes to items in the collection.Over €1 billion is being spent on the main building, the Electoral Palace, which will be out of service for several years and completed in 2030; this includes work on fire protection, re-wiring, and plumbing, as well as modernization of lecture halls, common areas, and offices.

The Humanities departments are being accommodated in the former Zurich Insurance building on Rabinstraße throughout the construction works, while the administrative staff are being housed in the former Deutscher Herold headquarters.

In addition, by 2031 €128 million will be spent on a 'Forum of Knowledge' which will extend the main building on a site spanning several tens of thousands of square feet, and will be open to members of the university and city residents.

This will include expanding the bilingually of services in central administration, enhancement of foreign language and intercultural competency acquisition opportunities as part of personnel staff skill development, further development of existing internationalization structures within the faculties, departments and institutes, digitalization of service structures for international students and academics at the University of Bonn, and increasing the University of Bonn's international marketing and public relations.

The institute edits the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, a German language encyclopedia treating the history of early Christians in late antiquity.

The Center for Economics and Neuroscience, founded in 2009 by Christian Elger, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winner Armin Falk, Martin Reuter and Bernd Weber, provides an international platform for interdisciplinary work in neuroeconomics.

The Excellence Initiative also resulted in the founding of the Bonn-Cologne Graduate School of Physics and Astronomy (an honors Masters and PhD program, jointly with the University of Cologne).

The center also arranges for regular visitors and seminars (on topics including String theory, Nuclear physics, Condensed matter etc.).

[47] The ARWU's 2022 Mathematics rankings further bolster this reputation, placing the university 15th in the world and maintaining its first-place national standing.