ETH Zurich is a public research university in Zürich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It consistently ranks among the 20 best universities in the world and its 16 departments span a variety of disciplines and subjects.
ETH Zurich
The ETH Zurich main building, which is the centre of the Zentrum campus.
The northern wall of the main building, depicting famous scientists and academics
Aerial picture of the Hönggerberg campus. The rest of the city of Zurich, where the main campus is, and the Alps can be seen in the background.
A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of knowledge production", along with "intergenerational knowledge transfer and the certification of new knowledge" through the awarding of doctoral degrees, and continue to be "the very center of scientific productivity". They can be public or private, and often have well-known brand names.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) is responsible for the Humboldtian model of higher education.
Nuclear research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a research university, in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, May 2005
Switzerland spends 0.76% of GDP on university research funding as of 2017, some 3.8x the ratio of the United States (0.20%). ETH Zurich, founded in 1854, is the leading Swiss research university by its number of scholars and publications.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, founded in 1876, is considered the first research university in the United States and as of fiscal year 2020 had been the national leader in annual research and development spending for over four decades.