The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 departments. It was Europe's first university dedicated to training secular administrative staff, and is one of the oldest academic institutions in continuous operation. Federico II is the third University in Italy by number of students enrolled, but despite its size it is still one of the best universities in Italy and the world, in southern Italy it leads 1st Ranking since it started, being particularly notable for research; in 2015 it was ranked among the top 100 universities in the world by citations per paper. The university is named after its founder Frederick II. In October 2016 the university hosted the first ever

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

IOS Developer Academy and in 2018 the

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

Digital Transformation Lab.

History

The university of

Federico II was founded by emperor of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From the accession of Otto I in 962 ...

Frederick II on 5 June 1224. It is the world's oldest state-supported institution of higher education and research. One of the most famous students was Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...

Political project of Frederick II

Frederick II had specific objectives when he founded the university in Naples: first, to train administrative and skilled bureaucratic professionals for the ''curia regis'' (the kingdom's ministries and governing apparatus), as well as preparing lawyers and judges who would help the sovereign to draft laws and administer justice. Second, he wanted to facilitate the cultural development of promising young students and scholars, avoiding any unnecessary and expensive trips abroad: by creating a State University, Emperor Frederick avoided having young students during his reign complete their training at the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

, which was in a city that was hostile to the imperial power. The University of Naples was arguably the first to be formed from scratch by a higher authority, not based upon an already-existing private school. Although its claim to be the first state-sponsored university can be challenged by

Palencia Palencia () is a city of Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the province of Palencia. Located in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in the northern half o ...

(which was founded by the Castilian monarch c.1212), Naples certainly was the first chartered one. The artificiality of its creation posed great difficulties in attracting students;

was one of the few who came in these early years. Those years were further complicated by the long existence, in nearby

Salerno Salerno (, , ; nap, label= Salernitano, Saliernë, ) is an ancient city and ''comune'' in Campania (southwestern Italy) and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after ...

, of Europe's most prestigious medical faculty, the

Schola Medica Salernitana The Schola Medica Salernitana ( it, Scuola Medica Salernitana) was a Medieval medical school, the first and most important of its kind. Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the south Italian city of Salerno, it was founded in the 9th century and rose ...

. The fledgling faculty of medicine at Naples had little hope of competing with it, and in 1231 the right of examination was surrendered to Salerno. The establishment of new faculties of theology and law under papal sponsorship in Rome in 1245 further drained Naples of students, as Rome was a more attractive location. In an effort to revitalize the dwindling university, in 1253, all the remaining schools of the university of Naples moved to Salerno, in the hope of creating a single viable university for the south. But that experiment failed and the university (minus medicine) moved back to Naples in 1258 (in some readings, Naples was "refounded" in 1258 by Manfred Hohenstaufen, as by this time there were hardly any students left). The Angevin reforms after 1266 and the subsequent decline of Salerno gave the University of Naples a new lease on life and put it on a stable, sustainable track.

Academics

The university has 13 faculties: * Agriculture * Architecture * Biotechnology * Economics * Engineering * Law * Letters and philosophy * Mathematical, physical and

natural sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatabil ...

* Medicine and surgery *

Pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it links healt ...

Political sciences Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

* Sociology *

Veterinary medicine Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in animals. Along with this, it deals with animal rearing, husbandry, breeding, research on nutri ...

Ranking

Noted people

Notable alumni

Among those who have attended the University of Naples Federico II are Italian presidents

Enrico De Nicola Enrico De Nicola, (; 9 November 1877 – 1 October 1959) was an Italian jurist, journalist, politician, and provisional head of state of republican Italy from 1946 to 1948. Afterwards, he became the first president of Italy on 1 January 1948 ...

, Giovanni Leone and

Giorgio Napolitano Giorgio Napolitano (; born 29 June 1925) is an Italian politician who served as president of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first Italian president to be re-elected to the presidency. Due to his dominant position in Italian politics, some critics ...

; mayors of Naples Luigi de Magistris and Gaetano Manfredi; CEO Fabrizio Freda; and philosophers

Benedetto Croce Benedetto Croce (; 25 February 1866 – 20 November 1952) was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician, who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography and aesthetics. In most regards, Croce was a li ...

and Nicola Abbagnano. * Samantha Cristoforetti, astronaut and commandor of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

* Saint Thomas Aquinas, philosopher and theologian * Leonardo Bianchi, physician and politician *

Amadeo Bordiga Amadeo Bordiga (13 June 1889 – 25 July 1970) was an Italian Marxist theorist, revolutionary socialist, founder of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), member of the Communist International (Comintern) and later a leading figure of the Interna ...

, politician and political theorist * Giordano Bruno, philosopher, Dominican friar, mathematician and astronomer * Renato Caccioppoli, mathematician * Antonio Cardarelli, physician and politician * Ernesto De Martino, historian of religion and folklore scholar * Francesco De Martino, eminent jurist, intellectual and politician * Fabrizio de Miranda, structural engineer *

Gaetano Filangieri Gaetano Filangieri (22 August 1753 – 21 July 1788) was an Italian jurist and philosopher. Filangieri was born in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, in the province of Naples, Italy. He was born the third son of a sibship of the noble family of Fila ...

, jurist and philosopher * Marta Filizola, computational biophysicist * Nicola Fusco, mathematician * Pietro Giannone, historian, philosopher and jurist * Nunziante Ippolito, physician and anatomist * Antonio Labriola, philosopher * Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

* Vangjel Meksi, Albanian physician, translator and philologist * Attilio Micheluzzi, comics author-artist, graduate in architecture *

Giuseppe Mingione Giuseppe Mingione (born 28 August 1972) is an Italian mathematician who is active in the fields of partial differential equations and calculus of variations. Scientific activity Mingione received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of N ...

, mathematician * Giuseppe Moscati, Roman Catholic saint, physician, educator, and scientist * Francesco Saverio Nitti, economist and politician * Umberto Nobile, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer * Luigi Palmieri, physicist *

Luca Parmitano Colonel Luca Parmitano (born 27 September 1976 in Paternò, Sicily) is an Italian astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps for the European Space Agency (ESA). He was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009. Parmitano is also a Colonel and te ...

, astronaut * Raffaele Piria, chemist * Roberto Saviano, journalist and novelist * Athanas Shundi, Albanian pharmacist and politician * Vincenzo Tiberio, physician * Anna Tramontano, computational biologist * Cinzia Verde, marine biochemistry researcher * Giambattista Vico, philosopher, historian, and jurist * Giuseppe Zaccagnino, diplomat and art collector

Presidents of the Italian Republic

* Giovanni Leone *

Notable professors

* St. Thomas Aquinas, influential philosopher, saint, influential theologian * Leonardo Bianchi, physician and politician * Renato Caccioppoli, mathematician * Antonio Cardarelli, physician and politician * Domenico Cotugno, physician * Nicola Fusco, mathematician * Antonio Genovesi, philosopher and economist * Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, physician * Stefania Filo Speziale, first woman to graduate in architecture in Naples *

Ettore Majorana Ettore Majorana (,, uploaded 19 April 2013, retrieved 14 December 2019 ; born on 5 August 1906 – possibly dying after 1959) was an Italian theoretical physicist who worked on neutrino masses. On 25 March 1938, he disappeared under mysteri ...

, physicist *

Macedonio Melloni Macedonio Melloni (11 April 1798 – 11 August 1854) was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light. Life Born at Parma, in 1824 he was appointed professor at the local Uni ...

, physicist * Giuseppe Mercalli, volcanologist * Vincenzo Monaldi, physician and physiologist. First Italian Minister of Health * Francesco Saverio Nitti, economist and politician * Luigi Palmieri, physicist and meteorologist * Alessandro Piccolo, Italian chemist and agricultural scientist * Nino Salvatore, physician * Giosuè Sangiovanni, zoologist, founder of the Faculty of Natural Sciences * Filippo Silvestri, entomologist * Giambattista Vico, philosopher, historian, and jurist

Honoris Causa graduates

* John Nash *

Franco Modigliani Franco Modigliani (18 June 1918 – 25 September 2003) was an Italian-American economist and the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He was a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Carnegie Mellon Uni ...

Richard Meier Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...

* Umberto Veronesi * Louis Ignarro *

Riccardo Muti Riccardo Muti, (; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor. He currently holds two music directorships, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. Muti has previously held posts at the Maggio Musicale ...

* Takaaki Kajita *

Paolo Sorrentino Paolo Sorrentino (; born 31 May 1970) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. His 2013 film '' The Great Beauty'' won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and the Bafta Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In Italy he was honour ...

* Tim Cook

References

External links

University of Naples Federico II Website
* Girolamo Arnaldi
Studio di Napoli
in '' Enciclopedia Federiciana'', Rome, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2005. {{authority control Universities and colleges in Naples 13th-century establishments in the Kingdom of Sicily Naples Federico II, University of 1224 establishments in Europe Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor