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The University was founded on May 12, 1635, by Cardinal Péter Pázmány (1570-1637) as a Catholic institution. Its original location was in northwest Hungary, Nagyszombat (now Trnava in Slovakia), since large areas of Hungary were at that time the subject of continual dispute with the Ottoman Empire.

The original faculties were Theology and Philosophy, where teaching began in the academic year 1635-1636. Though the University had a strong Catholic character, the curriculum from the very beginning included mathematics and natural sciences, like physics and cartography. 1667 saw the foundation of the Faculty of Law, and Medicine followed more than a century later, in 1769. Thus established with the classical European university structure of four faculties, state control was introduced in the same year by Empress Maria Theresia, who gave it the new name of the Royal Hungarian University (Magyar Királyi Tudományegyetem).

The Turks were expelled from Hungary at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries and Buda slowly regained its role as capital of the country. The University was moved to Buda in 1777. In the next decades its faculties were distributed among several buildings in Buda and Pest. The prosperity of the second half of the 19th century made it possible the build the campus in Museum Ring (Múzeum körút), which is now the location of several departments of the Faculty of Arts. In addition, the ever-growing University acquired new buildings – more than 100 by now – spread out all over Budapest.

The original language of teaching was Latin, and it was only about two hundred years ago that the Department of Hungarian Language was created. Hungarian became the official language of undergraduate teaching in 1861.

The structure of the university remained unaltered for almost two hundred years, up to 1950, when significant changes were brought about by the communist takeover. The faculty of Theology was expelled from the University on ideological grounds, and the Faculty of Medicine became the independent Semmelweis Medical University. The Faculty of Philosophy and Arts was divided into the Faculties of Science and Arts. A recent change was the opening of a new campus in the South Buda. In 1950 the University was re-named after Baron Loránd EÖTVÖS (1848-1919), a Professor of Physics of considerable reputation (experimental evidence for the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass) and an eminent statesman. 

The Eötvös Memorial Day (Eötvös-nap) as well as the Pázmány Memorial Day (Pázmány-nap), held in the first half of May serve as the dates for distinguished lectures and official awards presented by the Rector of the University and the Dean of the Faculty.

Changes of the coats of arms of the University through the centuries. The upper left figure shows the coat of arms of the Óbuda University from 1395, serving as a model for the main motif of the arms of the present University, founded by Cardinal Péter Pázmány in 1635.

Some of the illustrations, short biographies and hystoric materials have been taken from the CD 'The Voice of the Martians', Hungarian Science Day, Helsinki, 1998 (Editor: Prof. Béla BALÁZS).

 

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