University of Dhaka

Logo of Dhaka University

University of Dhaka (also known as Dhaka University or DU) is the oldest university in Bangladesh. Nawab Bahadur Sir Khwaja Salimullah, who played a pioneering role in establishing the university in Dhaka, donated 600 acres of land from his estate for this purpose. On the first day of July 1921 the University of Dhaka opened its doors to students with Sir P.J. Hartog as the first Vice-Chancellor of the University in British Raj, it has made significant contributions to the modern history of Bangladesh. After the Partition of India, it became the focal point of progressive and democratic movements in Pakistan. Its students and teachers played a central role in the rise of Bengali nationalism and the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

The university's distinguished alumni include Muhammad Yunus (winner 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, pioneer of Microcredit), Natyaguru Nurul Momen (Pioneer literetuer, Theatre & Cultural Doyen; who was both an early student & teacher of DU), Muhammad Shahidullah (educator, philologist & linguist), Serajul Islam Choudhury (the country's leading public intellectual and writer), Rehman Sobhan (social democratic economist), Mohammad Ataul Karim (physicist), Abul Fateh (one of the founding fathers of South Asian diplomacy), Buddhadeb Bose (20th-century Bengali poet), and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the founding father of Bangladesh). It also enjoyed associations with Satyendra Nath Bose, Vijayaraghavan, and Kazi Nazrul Islam.

Today, it is the largest public research university in Bangladesh, with a student body of 37,018 and a faculty of 1,992. It was identified by AsiaWeek as one of the top 100 universities in Asia.