It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ranked among Europe's leading engineering institutions.

It is located in the town Kongens Lyngby, 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) north of central Copenhagen, Denmark.

[3] DTU was founded in 1829 as the "College of Advanced Technology" (Danish: Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt).

The Physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, at that time a professor at the University of Copenhagen, was one of the driving forces behind this initiative.

He was inspired by the École Polytechnique in Paris, France which Ørsted had visited as a young scientist.

From 1933, the institution was officially known as Danmarks tekniske Højskole (DtH), which commonly was translated into English, as the 'Technical University of Denmark'.

The formal name, Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, however, still includes the original name.In 1960 a decision was made to move the College of Advanced Technology to new and larger facilities in Lyngby north of Copenhagen.

[4] On 23 and 24 November 1967, the University Computing Center hosted the NATO Science Committee's Study Group first meeting discussing the newly coined term "Software Engineering".

The institute currently leads Swarm, a project to investigate the properties of the Earth's magnetic field.

It has been in development by Risø and DTU Wind Energy for over 30 years, and runs on PCs using Microsoft Windows.

[16][17] The Campus Village was constructed in the summer of 2001, and was opened as an international student dormitory starting in fall 2001.

[18] Residents staying in Campus Village may be participants of exchange or bilateral agreement programs between DTU and their home university.

[20] In relation to this, the university was accused of violating the principles of free speech by threatening to fire employees, among them Rolf W. Berg, who voiced their criticism of the institute director.

[21][22][23][24][25][26] On 7 April 2010, the successor of Sørensen was announced, at a department meeting, as Erling Stenby,[27] who officially took over as Director on 1 May 2010.