The Université catholique de Louvain, sometimes known as UCL, is Belgium's largest French-speaking university.

History

The origins of the institution date back to 1425, which makes it the oldest Catholic university still active. The university was established by a bull signed by Pope Martin V.

The University was based in Leuven ("Louvain" in French), 30 km from Brussels, until 1968. Up to that year, ressentment had been growing among Flemings because of privileges given to French-speaking academic staff and the lack of respect (or at most what Dutch-speakers felt to be a lack of respect, obviously something rather subjective) by the local French-speaking community for Flanders wherein Leuven lies. Some French-speakers proposed to change the administrative status of Leuven, including it in a larger, bilingual 'Greater-Brussels'. On the other hand, some Flemish nationalists wanted to expel any trace of the French language from Flanders and could not stand a bilingual university there. The linguistic dispute was resolved by the following settlement: the Dutch-speaking part, now named Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, would stay in Leuven (which is in the part of Belgium where Dutch is the official language), while the French-speaking part would move to a newly created town, Louvain-la-Neuve, 20 km south-east of Brussels.

Campuses

While the main campus of Université catholique de Louvain is based at Louvain-la-Neuve, there is however a small campus in Brussels, in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, which until recently used to be called "Louvain-en-Woluwe" (the authorities of the UCL tend to prefer nowadays to refer to it as "UCL-Brussels"). This satellite campus hosts the faculty of Medicine of the university.

General credit

The Université catholique de Louvain educates nearly 25,000 students in all areas of studies, from theology to biology and from nuclear physics to law. It has educated a large part of Belgium's elite and is still considered, with its Dutch-speaking sister, as a centre of excellence in many fields. It is connected to Brussels by a train service, and the new town and campus is unusually architecturally interesting.

Notable alumni

• Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin, a mathematician who proved the prime number theorem.
• Georges Lemaître, who proposed the Big Bang theory (at the time, Université catholique de Louvain was based in Leuven and was the same as the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven).
• Christian de Duve, Nobel Prize in Medicine 1974, for his discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.

See also

• List of universities in Belgium

External links

• Official web site of Université catholique de Louvain
• IAG's official website. IAG is the affiliated business school of UCL and is part of the CEMS network of leading european business schools.