Nagoya University

Nagoya University, also known as Meidai or NU, is a national research university in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya. Founded in 1939 as one of the Imperial Universities of Japan, it now holds the status of a Designated National University. The university is recognized as the origin of the Sakata School of physics and the Hirata School of chemistry. By 2021, seven Nobel Prize winners had ties to Nagoya University, placing it third in Japan and Asia behind Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo.

The institution’s history began with a Temporary Medical School and Public Hospital opened in 1871, though it was formally established as Nagoya Imperial University in 1939 and renamed Nagoya University in 1947. Key scientific contributions include the Sakata model, the PMNS matrix, the Okazaki fragment, Noyori asymmetric hydrogenation, and the Blue LED. In March 2018, it was among the first five universities chosen as Designated National Universities. In April 2020, it formed the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System with Gifu University, a joint corporation that keeps both institutions independent.

Nearly half of Japan’s 21st-century Nobel laureates in Natural Sciences have connections to Nagoya University. Of its seven associated laureates, four were professors and three were alumni. Syukuro Manabe, the 2021 Nobel laureate in Physics, served as a specially invited professor from December 2007 to March 2014.

The university’s Academic Charter emphasizes fostering courageous intellectuals through independent thought, guided by an ethos of “freedom, openness, and enterprising.” Its first president championed the principle “Harmony is to be valued” from the Seventeen-article constitution. Most students come from the Tōkai region, but the university also draws students from across Japan and abroad. As of 2021, total enrollment was 15,771, including over 1,900 international students from more than 110 countries.

Nagoya University offers nine faculties: Humanities, Education, Law and Political Science, Economics, Informatics, Science, Medicine, Engineering, and Agriculture. Its graduate schools cover Humanities, Education and Human Development, Law and Political Science, Economics, Informatics, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Bioagricultural Sciences, International Development (GSID), Mathematics, Environmental Studies, and Pharmaceutical Sciences.