From Ørsted to Bohr:The Sciences and the Danish University System, 1800–1920

Abstract

The University of Copenhagen was for a long time Denmark’s only university and the most important institution for scientific activity in the country. However, until the early eighteenth century the natural sciences were not recognized as academic fields on a par with the traditional fields of the university. Consequently, H. C. Ørsted (1777–1851) and other Danish scientists had to fight hard to emancipate the sciences from the faculties of medicine and philosophy. Only with the establishment of a separate faculty of mathematics and science in 1850 did the situation change and Danish university-based science began to prosper. This development benefitted from the creation of several other scientific institutions in Copenhagen, which had a synergetic effect on science in Denmark. Although science progressed in the late nineteenth century, the university remained traditional and as much oriented towards local needs as to the international scientific community. Only around 1920 did the Danish science system, centered on the University of Copenhagen, enter a phase of sustained modernization and internationalism. Niels Bohr’s (1885–1962) institute of theoretical physics from 1921 is one example of the progress, and the four Nobel prizes awarded to Danish scientists in the period 1903–1926 is another example.