Notable alumni, faculty and researchers include Pope Benedict XVI, Rudolf Peierls, Josef Mengele, Richard Strauss, Walter Benjamin, Joseph Campbell, Muhammad Iqbal, Marie Stopes, Wolfgang Pauli, Bertolt Brecht, Max Horkheimer, Karl Loewenstein, Carl Schmitt, Gustav Radbruch, Ernst Cassirer, Ernst Bloch and Konrad Adenauer.

In the period of German humanism, the university's academics included names such as Conrad Celtes and Petrus Apianus.

The Minister of Education, Maximilian von Montgelas, initiated a number of reforms that sought to modernize the rather conservative and Jesuit-influenced university.

[5] In the second half of the 19th century, the university rose to great prominence in the European scientific community, attracting many of the world's leading scientists.

In 1943, the White Rose group, consisting of anti-Nazi students, carried out a campaign opposing the National Socialists at this institution.

The university subsequently removed Kurt Huber, a Nazi opposition fighter, from his position and revoked his doctorate upon his arrest.

Between 1933 and 1936, Karl Escherich served as rector at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, followed by Leopold Kölbl from 1936 to 1938, Philipp Broemser from 1938 to 1941, and finally, Walther Wüst from 1941 to 1945.

With a total of 1.9 billion euros, 75 percent of which comes from the federal state, its architects aim to strategically promote top-level research and scholarship.

In order to qualify for this third area, a university had to have at least one internationally recognized academic center of excellence and a new graduate school.

On Friday 13 October 2006, a blue-ribbon panel announced the results of the Germany-wide Excellence Initiative for promoting top university research and education.

[6] In September 2018, the Munich public prosecutor's office investigated a university vice president on suspicion of embezzlement.

According to them, the LMU keeps pigs in tight grid boxes, so that some animals showed scratches, bumps and respiratory diseases from lying down.

[9] LMU's institutes and research centers are spread throughout Munich, with several buildings located in the suburbs of Oberschleissheim and Garching as well as Maisach and Bad Tölz.

The university's main buildings are grouped around Geschwister-Scholl-Platz and Professor-Huber-Platz on Ludwigstrasse, extending into side streets such as Akademiestraße, Schellingstraße, and Veterinärstraße.

Despite the Bologna Process which saw the demise of most traditional academic-degree courses such as the Diplom and Magister Artium in favour of the more internationally known Bachelors and Masters system, the University of Munich continues to offer more than 100 areas of study with numerous combinations of majors and minors.

[11] In line with the university's internationalisation as a popular destination for tertiary studies, an increasing number of courses mainly at the graduate and post-graduate levels are also available in English to cater to international students who may have little or no background in the German language.

[12] Some notable subject areas which currently offer programmes in English include various fields of psychology, physics as well as business and management.

MISU invites international students to attend short-term programs at the LMU Munich in order to progress academically even in winter or summer breaks at their home university.

MISU hereby offers two course formats: On the one hand German Language classes are held at different times over the year.

Participants are thus not only supervised intensively by established researchers on selected topics but are also introduced to the history, culture and politics of Munich, Bavaria and Germany.

MISU's short-term programs therefore strengthen the LMU's international visibility as one of the highest ranked universities in Europe.

[37][failed verification] The alumni of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich played a major role in the development of quantum mechanics.

Working under the guidance of Friedrich Hommel, Iqbal published his doctoral thesis in 1908, entitled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia.