Founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, it began instruction in 1737 and is recognized as the oldest university in Lower Saxony.

[8] The initial university infrastructure was modest, comprising only a riding hall and a fencing house, with lectures held in the Paulinerkirche, Dominican monastery, or professors' homes.

[11] This period marked Göttingen's ascendancy in academic circles, emphasizing its role in fostering an environment conducive to scientific inquiry and innovation.

Likewise, the Faculty of Theology in conjunction with other orientalists and ancient historians across the university became an international center for the study of religion and antiquity.

In 1809, Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher best known for his work The World as Will and Representation, became a student at the university, where he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Kant.

Later, Max Weber, one of the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society, also studied history in Göttingen.

The Brothers Grimm, the best-known storytellers of folktales like "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White", taught here and compiled the first German dictionary.

The expulsion in 1837 of the seven professors – the so-called Die Göttinger Sieben (the Germanist Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht (1800–1876), the historian Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785–1860), the orientalist Georg Heinrich August Ewald (1803–1875), the historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–1875), the physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804–1891), and the philologist brothers Jakob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859)) – for protesting against the revocation by Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, of the liberal constitution of 1833 hurt the reputation of the city and the university.

Thereafter, Dirichlet and Riemann took over the chair successively and made significant contributions in the fields of algebra, geometry, and number theory.

By 1900, David Hilbert and Felix Klein had attracted mathematicians from around the world to Göttingen, which made it a leading center of mathematics by the turn of the 20th century.

Ludwig Prandtl joined the University of Göttingen in 1904, and developed it into a leader in fluid mechanics and in aerodynamics over the next two decades.

He introduced the concept of boundary layer and founded mathematical aerodynamics by calculating air flow in the down wind direction.

Oppenheimer, the American scientist and "father of the atomic bomb", was one of Max Born's most famous students and received his doctorate here.

For example, Edward Everett, once Secretary of State and President of Harvard University, stayed in Göttingen for two years of study.

Even John Lothrop Motley, a diplomat and historian, had personal friendship with Otto von Bismarck during his two-year-long study in Göttingen.

In what was later called the "great purge" of 1933, academics including Max Born, Victor Goldschmidt, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Edmund Landau, Emmy Noether, and Richard Courant were expelled or fled.

Following the great purge, in 1934 David Hilbert, by then a symbol of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education.

Within the framework of the 2006–07 German Universities Excellence Initiative, it won funding for its future concept "Tradition, Innovation, Autonomy," its graduate school "Neurosciences and Molecular Biosciences," and its research cluster "Microscopy at the Nanometer Range."

In the 2012 Excellence Initiative, Göttingen succeeded in obtaining funds for its graduate school "Neurosciences and Molecular Biosciences" and its research cluster "Microscopy at the Nanometer Range".

Hsu Tzong-li, a Taiwanese judge who has served as the President of the Judicial Yuan (Taiwan's constitutional court) since 2016, earned his doctorate in law from University of Göttingen in 1986.

[37] The most famous tradition of the university is that PhD students who have just passed their Rigorosum (oral doctoral examination) or dissertation defense sit in a wagon – decorated with flowers and balloons and accompanied by relatives and friends, drive around the inner city and arrive at the Marktplatz – the central square where the old town hall and the Gänseliesel statue are located.

Apart from those celebrities mentioned above, notable people that have studied or taught at Georg-August University include the American banker J. P. Morgan, the seismologist Beno Gutenberg, the endocrinologist Hakaru Hashimoto, who studied there before World War I, and several notable Nobel laureates like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg.

Anthropologist Marlina Flassy earned her doctorate in Göttingen, before becoming the first woman and indigenous Papuan to be appointed Dean at Cenderawasih University.

Professor Gunther Heinrich von Berg (Doctor of Law), taught at the University of Göttingen between 1794 and 1800 before he entered politics.