History - a Child of its Time

• They Put Bergen on the Map
• Milestones in our History

Bergen's Museum
Wilhelm Koren Christie was one of the founders of Bergen's Museum in 1825, and today his statue is enthroned on Muséplass, looking down over the city centre. Christie's position and enthusiasm made him a vital factor in creating goodwill and a willingness to make donations to the new museum. Today's large museum buildings were raised in the 1860s.

Even at that time, some voices were suggesting that the Museum should work towards "... the founding of an academic college of higher education for Western Norway in Bergen". The concept of a university had been sown. 

The Sundt Chair of Zoology was founded in 1907. For the first time, Bergen's Museum was in a position to offer university-level teaching. In 1914, the five heads of department were given the title of professor: Dr. August Brinkmann, in Zoology, Dr. Bjørn Helland Hansen in Biology, Jens Holmboe in Botany, Dr. Carl Fredrik Kolderup in Mineralogy and Geology, and Dr. Haakon Shetelig in History and Antiquities. These new departments illustrate what the main subjects of interest were in academic circles in Bergen.

By the beginning of the 1940s, solid research groups were well established in and around Bergen's Museum. As well as research, the Museum now offered university-level teaching in a number of subjects, although examinations were still held under the auspices of the University of Oslo. 

It was only natural that subjects related to the weather and the oceans should be well established in the Bergen academic environment. The Earthquake Station and the Western Norway Weather Service were familiar to most Norwegians. Marine research, oceanography, biology, geology and meteorology were important subjects in Bergen.

The new University of Bergen was founded in 1946 with a basis in the Faculties of Medicine, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and Arts. The University of Bergen was a new, modern alternative to a much more traditional university model that concentrated on long periods of study for the professions and the civil service.

In the course of the sixties and seventies a university education became a serious prospect for a large proportion of young Norwegians. At the University of Bergen, student numbers rose from just over one thousand in 1960 to almost 8 000 in 1975. Most graduates found work in the public sector. The universities themselves became important consumers of academic manpower. The next major wave of students came in the nineties. Between 1987 and 1995 student numbers more than doubled from 8 700 to 17 800. In the light of the current labour market situation, one of the most important challenges facing the University of Bergen is to ensure that its graduates and its academic expertise can be utilized to a greater extent by the private sector.

A new and modern university
Among the most important political arguments in favour of founding a new university in Bergen was the range of services that it would be capable of providing for Western Norway. The University of Bergen was to be a modern university that would serve the local community. At the beginning of the sixties the Kleppe Committee discussed the most appropriate dimensions of UoB, and suggested that it should expand to accommodate around 3 000 students. In conjunction with the city's plans for the university district of Nygårdshøyden, this supplied important guidelines for the future development of the University. Plans for teaching in the social sciences came in the sixties. One of the most important arguments for a movement in this direction was that academic activities and teaching ought to develop along the same lines as social trends. The development of new academic subjects is more closely linked to the needs of the community than it used to be. One example of this is the establishment of university-level education in fisheries in 1972. Another facet of this situation has been the growth of externally financed contract research, which is also more highly organized than previously. The University of Bergen Research Foundation (Unifob), which was established in 1986, will be an important organizer of externally financed research and will link research sponsors with the appropriate groups at the University.

They Put Bergen on the Map

A selection of three scientists from three different epochs, who represented very different subjects, and who really put Bergen on the international academic map. All of them played a critical role in the development of their own subjects at UoB and all were sources of inspiration to contemporary and future generations of researchers.

He solved the mystery of leprosy
Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1841-1912) was the discoverer of the leprosy bacterium. The question of whether leprosy was inherited or was an infectious disease was an important topic of discussion in the medical community in the mid-nineteenth century. The results published by Armauer Hansen in 1874 were a turning point in our understanding of the causes of leprosy and how it was regarded. He demonstrated that leprosy could not be genetically determined, but that it was caused by the spread of Bacillus leprae bacteria.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Armauer Hansen was the architect of two important laws that dealt with the care of lepers in Norway. All over the world, countries based their struggles with this disease on his work. In 1875 there were about 2 100 lepers in Norway. By the time of his death, only 300 were still infected.

The father of modern weather-forecasting
Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862 - 1951) is regarded as the founder of the "Bergen School" of meteorology. The methods developed by this school led to a breakthrough for new knowledge and methods in practical weather forecasting.

Thereafter, weather forecasting was based to a greater extent on scientific principles, with a much denser network of observation posts that offered better understanding of the atmospheric processes that produce our weather. Bjerknes' work was vital to our understanding of the movements of air and ocean masses, in particular of how these are a result of thermal processes.

The European researcher from Bergen
Stein Rokkan (1921 - 1979) was one of the leading post-war figures in international political science and sociology. His aim was to make it possible to perform transnational analyses of political communities that would comprise the development of new theory and methods, standardization of data production, the creation of data archives and the development of practical research cooperation.

Stein Rokkan established the Norwegian Social Science Data Service in Bergen, founded and built up the Dept. of Sociology and played a central role in the establishment of the University's Faculty of Social Sciences.

Milestones in our History