[3] The university is the alma mater of five Presidents of India, including A. P. J. Abdul Kalam; three Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of India; two Indian physics Nobel laureates, CV Raman and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; several notable mathematicians including Srinivasa Ramanujan and Abel Prize winner S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan; and Turing Award winner Raj Reddy among others.

This public petition, which was presented by the Advocate General Mr George Norton on 11 November 1839, pressed the need for an English college in the city of Madras.

The dispatch recommended the establishment in the universities of professorships "for the purposes of the delivery of lectures in various branches of learning including vernacular as well as classical languages."

[21] The description of the coat of arms of the university, designed in 1857, is: "Argent (silver or white) on a Mount issuant from the basement a Tiger passant proper (walking and coloured naturally), on a Chief Sable (black across the top), a Pale Or (a gold or yellow vertical strip down the centre 1/3 of the top or chief), thereon, between two Elephants heads couped of the field, a lotus flower leaved and slipped of the third, together with this motto Doctrina Vim Promovet Insitam".

[26] The Senate House, the university's first building, inaugurated in the year 1879, is considered a masterpiece of Robert Fellowes Chisholm, an architect of the 19th century, who blended the Indo-Saracenic style with Byzantine and European architectural features.

[28] The organisational structure of Madras University consists of the Senate, the Syndicate, the Academic Council, the faculties, the Finance Committee, and the boards of studies.

Comprises over 25,373 reference books and 72,714 Sanskrit and Tamil manuscripts written on palm leaf, copper plates, tree barks, leather etc.

[48] In 2007, the university was given a special grant of ₹100 crores by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to establish a nanotechnology research centre in commemoration of its sesqui-centenary (150th year) celebration.

[50] The National Centre for Ultrafast Process (NCUFP) of the university has mobilized research grants to the tune ₹7 crores through several funded projects including the DST, CSIR, DRDO and UGC.

[51] The Department of Crystallography and Biophysics was upgraded as a Centre of Advanced Study in 2007 and a grant of ₹2.53 crores was given for modernising research laboratories.

[52] In addition, UGC has identified the School of Earth Sciences and Department of Zoology as the Centres of Excellence and has allotted ₹3.25 crores each for their development.

[49] In 2019, Ministry of Human Resource Development of Government of India granted ₹50 crores to the university for upgrading its research capabilities under Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) scheme.

Some of the prominent alumni include Nobel laureates C. V. Raman[54] and S. Chandrasekhar,[55] mathematicians Srinivasa Ramanujan[56] K. S. Chandrasekharan, and S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan,[57] leading scientists, Raja Ramanna,[58] Rajagopala Chidambaram,[59] M. Visvesvaraya, E. C. George Sudarshan,[60] G. N. Ramachandran,[61] Govindarajan Padmanaban,[62] V. S. Ramachandran[63] and Alladi Ramakrishnan[64] Former presidents Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, V. V. Giri, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, R. Venkataraman and A.P.J.

Ramachandran,[83] K. C. S. Paniker,[84] Gemini Ganesan,[85] Mani Ratnam[86] and Mahesh Babu,[87] sports stars Viswanathan Anand, Vijay Amritraj,[88] Ramanathan Krishnan[89] and Srinivas 'Venkat', and politician Kuniyil Kailashnathan[90] among others.