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UiO bicentennial 2011

The University of Oslo has played a pivotal role in many of the major changes in Norway over the last 200 years. In connection with our bicentennial, we published stories about the University's contributions to society.

One of the most important reasons why Norwegians fought for a university in their country more than 200 years ago was the need to educate teachers who could strengthen the knowledge level of the population of a poor country under foreign control.

We have a lot to thank lawyer Jens Evensen for. Together with his team in the Legal Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he formulated the sentence “The right to subsea natural resources lies with the state.”

Fridtjof Nansen’s appetite for scientific discovery left a mark that inspires a wide range of academic disciplines, right up to the present day. Nansen’s research was important for a young nation, and he served to inspire it to shift its course away from Sweden and towards the sea and the High North.  

A fiasco became a success of global significance, thanks to scientific insight. Mineral fertiliser has been ranked Norway's most important invention of the last 100 years in a public survey carried out by the national broadcasting company NRK and the Norwegian Industrial Property Office.