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History

The university was founded in 1537 as the Schola Lausannensis, one year after Bern annexed the territory of Barony of Vaud from the Duchy of Savoy, as a school of theology with the purpose of training pastors for the church. It enjoyed great renown in its early years for being the first and, until the establishment of the Academy of Geneva in 1559, the only French-language Protestant school of theology. It quickly became a center of humanist learning, with thinkers such as Corderius and Celio Secondo Curione among its professors. In 1558, the school had 700 students. It entered into a period of decline in the following years, after several members of the academic staff, including rector Theodore Beza and Pierre Viret, resigned their seats to join the newly established Academy of Geneva.

In the seventeenth century, the institution became known as the Academy of Lausanne (Académie de Lausanne). In 1741, it counted 150 students and seven professors. Starting in 1837, the academy was modernized by the authorities of the canton of Vaud, becoming a secular institution divided into three faculties (letters and sciences, theology, and law). It continued to expand throughout the second half of the 19th century, until 1890, with the establishment of a medicine course, the academy received the name and status of a university.

In 1909, Rudolphe Archibald Reiss founded the first school of forensic science in the world: the Institut de police scientifique.

From 1970, the university moved progressively from the old centre of Lausanne, around the Cathedral and Château, to its present site at Dorigny.

The end of the 20th century, witnessed the beginnings of an ambitious project aiming at greater co-operation and development among the French-speaking universities of Lausanne, Geneva, and Neuchâtel, together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Among others, this led to the transfer of the sections of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry from the university to the EPFL; the funds that were made available following this transfer were invested in the development of the life sciences at the university, including the creation of a Center for Integrative Genomics.

In 2003, two new faculties were founded, concentrating on the life and human sciences: the Faculty of Biology and Medicine and the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment.

On 1 January 2014, the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) was integrated into the University of Lausanne.

Since August 2021, the rector of the University of Lausanne is Frédéric Herman; before then, the university was led by Nouria Hernandez (2016–2021) and by Dominique Arlettaz (2006–2016).

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