Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first German university to adopt the name Technische Universität (meaning 'university of technology').
The university alumni and staff includes several US National Academies members, two National Medal of Science laureates, the creator of the first fully functional programmable (electromechanical) computer, Konrad Zuse, and ten Nobel Prize laureates.
TU Berlin is a member of TU9, an incorporated society of the largest and most notable German institutes of technology and of the Top International Managers in Engineering network, which allows for student exchanges between leading engineering schools. It belongs to the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research. The TU Berlin is home of two innovation centers designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The university is labeled as "The Entrepreneurial University" (Die Gründerhochschule) by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
The university is notable for having been the first to offer a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management (Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen). The university designed the degree in response to requests by industrialists for graduates with the technical and management training to run a company. First offered in winter term 1926/27, it is one of the oldest programmes of its kind.
TU Berlin has one of the highest proportions of international students in Germany, almost 27% in 2019. In addition, TU Berlin is part of the Berlin University Alliance, has been conferred the title of "University of Excellence" under and receiving funding from the German Universities Excellence Initiative.
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History
On 1 April 1879, the Königlich Technische Hochschule zu Berlin ("Royal Technical Academy of Berlin") came into being through a merger of the Königliche Gewerbeakademie zu Berlin ("Royal Trade Academy", founded in 1827) and Königliche Bauakademie zu Berlin ("Royal Building Academy", founded in 1799), two predecessor institutions of the Prussian State.
In 1899, the Königlich Technische Hochschule zu Berlin was the first polytechnic in Germany to award doctorates, as a standard degree for the graduates, in addition to diplomas, thanks to professor Alois Riedler and Adolf Slaby, chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) and the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE).
In 1916 the long-standing Königliche Bergakademie zu Berlin, the Prussian mining academy created by the geologist Carl Abraham Gerhard in 1770 at the behest of King Frederick the Great, was incorporated into the Königlich Technische Hochschule as the "Department of Mining". Beforehand, the mining college had been, however, for several decades under the auspices of the Frederick William University (now Humboldt University of Berlin), before it was spun out again in 1860.
After Charlottenburg's absorption into Greater Berlin in 1920 and Germany becoming the Weimar Republic, the Königlich Technische Hochschule zu Berlin was renamed "Technische Hochschule zu Berlin" ("TH Berlin"). In 1927, the Department of Geodesy of the Agricultural College of Berlin was incorporated into the TH Berlin. During the 1930s, the redevelopment and expansion of the campus along the "East-West axis" were part of the Nazi plans of a Welthauptstadt Germania, including a new faculty of defense technology under General Karl Becker, built as a part of the greater academic town (Hochschulstadt) in the adjacent west-wise Grunewald forest. The shell construction remained unfinished after the outbreak of World War II and after Becker's suicide in 1940, it is today covered by the large-scale Teufelsberg rubble hill.
The north section of the main building of the university was destroyed during a bombing raid in November 1943. Due to the street fighting at the end of the Second World War, the operations at the TH Berlin were suspended as of 20 April 1945. Planning for the re-opening of the school began on 2 June 1945, once the acting rectorship led by Gustav Ludwig Hertz and Max Volmer was appointed. As both Hertz and Volmer remained in exile in the Soviet Union for some time to come, the college was not re-inaugurated until 9 April 1946, now bearing the name "Technische Universität Berlin".
Name
The official policy of the university is that only the German name, Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin), should be used abroad in order to promote corporate identity and that its name is not to be translated into English.
Campus
The TU Berlin covers 604,000 square metres (6.5 million square feet), distributed over various locations in Berlin.
The main campus is located in the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The seven schools of the university have some 33,933 students enrolled in 90 subjects (October 2015).
From 2012 to 2022, TU Berlin operated a satellite campus in Egypt, the El Gouna campus, to act as a scientific and academic field office. The nonprofit public–private partnership (PPP) aimed to offer services provided by Technische Universität Berlin at the campus in El Gouna on the Red Sea.
The university also has a franchise of its Global Production Engineering course – called Global Production Engineering and Management at the Vietnamese-German University in Ho Chi Minh City.
Organization
Since 2002, the TU Berlin has consisted of the following faculties and institutes:
Faculty I – Humanities and Educational Sciences (Geistes- und Bildungswissenschaften)
Institute of History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Literature
Institute for Art History and Historical Urbanism
Institute of Education
Institute of Language and Communication
Institute of Vocational Education and Work Studies
Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA)
Center for Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender Studies (ZIFG)
Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China (CCST)
Faculty II – Mathematics and Natural Sciences (Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften)
Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Institute of Chemistry
Institute of Solid-State Physics
Institute of Mathematics
Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics
Institute of Theoretical Physics
Faculty III – Process Sciences (Prozesswissenschaften)
Faculty and staff
As of 2015, 8,455 people work at the university: 338 professors, 2,598 postgraduate researchers, and 2,131 personnel work in administration, the workshops, the library, and the central facilities. In addition, there are 2,651 student assistants and 126 trainees. International student mobility is available through the ERASMUS programme or through the Top Industrial Managers for Europe (TIME) network.
Library
The new common main library of Technische Universität Berlin and of the Berlin University of the Arts was opened in 2004 and holds about 2.9 million volumes (2007). The library building was sponsored partially (estimated 10% of the building costs) by Volkswagen and is named officially "University Library of the TU Berlin and UdK (in the Volkswagen building)".
Some of the former 17 libraries of Technische Universität Berlin and of the nearby University of the Arts were merged into the new library, but several departments still retain libraries of their own. In particular, the school of 'Economics and Management' maintains a library with 340,000 volumes in the university's main building (Die Bibliothek – Wirtschaft & Management/"The Library" – Economics and Management) and the 'Department of Mathematics' maintains a library with 60,000 volumes in the Mathematics building (Mathematische Fachbibliothek/"Mathematics Library").
Notable alumni and professors
(Including those of the Academies mentioned in the History section)
Bruno Ahrends (1878–1948), architect
Steffen Ahrends (1907–1992), architect
Zora Arkus-Duntov (1909–1996), Russian and American engineer and racing car driver
Stancho Belkovski (1891–1962), Bulgarian architect, head of the Higher Technical School in Sofia and the department of public buildings.
August Borsig (1804–1854), businessman
Carl Bosch (1874–1940), chemist, Nobel Prize winner 1931
Franz Breisig (1868–1934), mathematician, inventor of the calibration wire and father of the term "quadripole network" in electrical engineering.
Wilhelm Cauer (1900–1945), mathematician, made contributions to the design of filters.
Henri Marie Coandă (1886–1972), Romanian aircraft designer; discovered the Coandă Effect.
Lotte Cohn (1893-1983), German-Israeli architect
Jan Czochralski (1885–1953), Polish chemist
Carl Dahlhaus (1928–1989), musicologist
Kurt Daluege (1897–1946), SS official, chief of Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) of Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1943, hanged as a war criminal
Walter Dornberger (1895–1980), Major-General, developer of the Air Force-NASA X-20 Dyna-Soar project.
Rankings
According to the QS World University Rankings 2025, TU Berlin was ranked 147th globally, making it the 8th best university in the country. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2023, the institution was ranked 136th globally and within the 12–13th range nationally. The Academic Ranking of World Universities for 2023 positions TU Berlin within the 201–300 range globally and the 10–19 range within Germany.
Measured by the number of top managers in the German economy, TU Berlin ranked 11th in 2019.
According to the research report of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2018, TU Berlin ranked 24th absolute among German universities across all scientific disciplines. Thereby TU Berlin ranked 9th absolute in natural sciences and engineering. The TU Berlin took 14th place absolute in computer science and 5th place absolute in electrical engineering. In a competitive selection process, the DFG selects the best research projects from researchers at universities and research institutes and finances them. The ranking is thus regarded as an indicator of the quality of research.
In the 2017 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the TU Berlin ranked 40th in the field of Engineering & Technology (3rd in Germany) and 36th in Computer science discipline (4th in Germany), making it one of the top 100 universities worldwide in all three measures.
As of 2016, TU Berlin was ranked 35th in the field of Engineering & Technology according to the British QS World University Rankings. It was one of Germany's highest ranked universities in statistics and operations research and in Mathematics according to QS.