Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (German Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen) is a state-supported university. It is located on the Neckar river, in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1477 by Count Eberhard VI (Eberhard in the Beard, 1445 - 1496), later the first duke of Württemberg, a civic and ecclesiastic reformer who established the school after becoming absorbed in the Renaissance revival of learning during his travels to Italy. Its present name was conferred on it in 1769 by Duke Karl Eugen who appended his first name to that of the founder (Karls = genitive of Karl).

The university has a history of innovative thought, particularly in theology, in which the university and the Tübinger Stift are famous till today. Philipp Melanchthon (1497 - 1560), the prime mover in building the German school system and a chief figure in the Protestant Reformation, helped establish its direction. Among Tübingen's eminent students have been astronomer Johannes Kepler, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and philosophers Friedrich Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. "The Tübingen Three" refers to Hölderlin, Hegel and Schelling. The university rose to the height of its prominence in the middle of the 19th century with the teachings of poet and civic leader Ludwig Uhland and the Protestant theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, whose beliefs and disciples became known as the "Tübingen School" which initiated historical analysis of Biblical texts, an approach also generally referred to as the Higher criticism. The University of Tübingen also was the first German university to establish a faculty of natural sciences, in 1863. DNA was discovered in 1868 at the University of Tübingen by Friedrich Miescher. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the first female Nobel Prize winner in medicine in Germany, also works in Tübingen.

In the 20th century, at Tübingen as in most other German universities the faculty, and the student body's activities, became dominated first by nationalist/right wing politics and then by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime until the beginning of the Allied occupation in 1945. In 1970 the university was restructured into a series of independent departments of study and research after the manner of French universities. Currently, about 22,000 students are enrolled, roughly one fourth of the total population of the city. The 17 hospitals in Tübingen affiliated with the university's faculty of medicine have 1,500 patient beds, and yearly cater to 66,000 in-patients and 200,000 out-patients.

Tübingen is one of four major university towns in Germany; the other three are Marburg, Göttingen, and Heidelberg.

Famous Alumni

Nobel laureates

• Günter Blobel, (1999, Physiology or Medicine)
• Karl Ferdinand Braun, (1909, Physics)
• Eduard Buchner, (1907, Chemistry)
• Adolf Butenandt, (1939, Chemistry)
• Hartmut Michel, (1988, Chemistry)
• Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, (1995, Physiology or Medicine)
• William Ramsay, (1904, Chemistry)
• Bert Sakmann, (1991, Physiology or Medicine)
• Georg Wittig, (1979, Chemistry)

Theology

• Karl Barth, Swiss Christian theologian
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian, preacher and opponent of the Nazi-Regime
• Walter Cardinal Kasper, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
• His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Philip Schaff, Church historian

Law

• Martin Bangemann , German minister of economy (1984-1988) and EU commissioner (1989-1999)
• Herta Däubler-Gmelin, German minister of justice (1998-2002)
• Philipp Jenninger , President of the German federal parliament (1984-1988)
• Klaus Kinkel, foreign minister of Germany (1993-1998)
• Gebhard Müller , President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (1959-1971)
• Carlo Schmid , German politician and one of the "fathers of the constitution"

Economics

• Helmut Haussmann , German minister of economy (1988-1991)
• Friedrich List
• Horst Köhler, director of the IMF (2000-2004) and president of Germany (since 2004)
• Wilhelm Rall , McKinsey senior partner
• Jürgen Stark , vice president of Deutsche Bundesbank
• Klaus Töpfer , former german secretary

German

• Eugen Gerstenmaier , President of the German federal parliament (1954-1969)
• Martin Walser, writer
• Christoph Martin Wieland, poet

History

• Kurt Georg Kiesinger, chancellor of Germany (1966-1969)
• Rita Süssmuth , President of the German federal parliament (1988-1998)

Philosophy

• Friedrich Hölderlin, poet
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, philosopher

Medicine

• Alois Alzheimer

Natural Sciences/Mathematics

• Theodor Eimer (1843-1898), zoology and comparative anatomy
• Hans Geiger, physics
• Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755), botany
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), astronomy