It also participates in the IT-Cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar and forms part of the Rhine-Main-Universities (RMU) along with Goethe University Frankfurt and Technische Universität Darmstadt.

In the confusion after the establishment of the Mainz Republic of 1792 and its subsequent recapture by the Prussians, academic activity came to a gradual standstill.

The remains of anti-aircraft warfare barracks erected in 1938 after the remilitarization of the Rhineland during the Third Reich served as the university's first buildings and are still in use today.

In 1990 Jürgen Zöllner became university president yet spent only a year in the position after he was appointed Minister for "Science and Advanced Education" for the State of Rhineland-Palatinate.

One can nonetheless study the theology, history of books, athletics, music, visual arts, theatre, and film.

Today the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz has approximately 36,000 students (as of 2010[update]) and consists of over 150 institutions and clinics.

[5] One of the instruments carried by the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a miniature Mössbauer spectrometer, was developed at the university.

In the period under review from 2014 to 2016, the University of Mainz received the highest number of competitive grants in the natural sciences.

Alumni of the old University include theologian Friedrich Spee as well as Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, who studied law from 1790 to 1792, and revolutionary Adam Lux.

Among notable alumni from the post-1946 University of Mainz are German politicians Malu Dreyer (SPD, Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate); Rainer Brüderle (FDP, Federal Minister for Economics and Technology); Horst Teltschik (former security advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl and president of the Munich Conference on Security Policy); Kristina Schröder, Federal Minister of Family and Social Affairs; Franz Josef Jung (CDU, Former Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs and former Federal Minister of Defence); Jens Beutel, Oberbürgermeister (mayor) of Mainz; particle physicist Vera Lüth; nuclear and particle physicist Johanna Stachel; sculptor Karlheinz Oswald; sports journalist Béla Réthy; political journalist Peter Scholl-Latour; Dieter Stolte, former director-general of ZDF; soprano Elisabeth Scholl; a founder of American avant-garde cinema Jonas Mekas; his brother Adolfas Mekas, film director, writer and educator; mural artist Rainer Maria Latzke; the German climatologist Wolfgang Seiler; Abbas Zaryab, notable Iranian scholar and historian; Indonesian Toraja Church pastor and politician, Ishak Pamumbu Lambe;[16] Srinivas Kishanrao Saidapur, an Indian reproductive biologist; American educator Biddy Martin; Stanisław Potrzebowski, one of leaders of the ridnovir movement in Poland; German opera singer Christine Esterházy; and Ruth Katharina Martha Pfau, nun, physician and writer who devoted more than 50 years of her life to fighting leprosy in Pakistan.