What is the origin of educational ideas, e.g., the idea that intervention in infancy has long-lasting effects on development.

Religion, Philosophy, and the Pre-modern World

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

How can we deal with today’s global challenges in sustainable, peaceful, fair, democratic, and effective ways? How can global events such as geopolitical shifts, ecological changes, technological innovations, and pandemics be better governed? Addressing these complex questions requires innovative, multidisciplinary…

Through our research, we work towards a fundamental understanding of the world and people around us. We use that knowledge to make the world a safe, healthy, sustainable, prosperous and just place.

On Saturday October 16, the special exhibition ‘Shared Sky: Canvases of the Universe’ opens in the Old Observatory in Leiden. The exhibit takes a cultural look at the starry sky by Aboriginal Australian and South African artists, and features colorful artwork that explores how these Indigenous cultures…

Minuscule elementary particles from space colliding with Earth can give us an insight into the distant objects they come from. But first, you need to know how to catch them. With a Vidi grant from NWO, researcher Sjoert van Velzen will 'hunt' for neutrinos coming from exploding black holes.

Recent study led at the Leiden Observatory has observed Orion with unprecedented detail. New data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and other telescopes have been used to create this stunning image showing a web of filaments in the Orion Nebula. These features appear red-hot…

New ways of working like working from home can have a positive impact on a person’s career, but only when their superior supports their choice. Researcher Maral Darouei will defend her PhD thesis on sustainable careers on 9 June 2020.

Professor Lodewijk Woltjer passed away on 25 August 2019.

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…

The city of Leiden is enriched by a dense infrastructure of knowledge institutes, with a uniquely strong focus on health and well-being. This gives Leiden

In Nature researchers at Leiden University and Utrecht University show how 47 teeth from Southern China indicate that anatomically modern humans where present at least 80,000 years ago in the region. This is 40,000 years earlier than in Europe.

Voters sent a clear signal in the recent Dutch provincial council elections with the 'monster' victory for the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB). This sign of ‘social resistance’ has consequences for the policy on nitrogen emissions, according to Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Local…

Leiden’s Religious Studies ranks 40th place in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

What are we referring to when we talk about ‘good work’? And what does it mean to be a good employer? Helen Pluut and Merel Cornax address these questions in a recently published editorial.

The student elections for the student representatives of the Faculty Council will take place from 22 to 25 April. Prominent members of four student parties engaged in a debate last Thursday on topics close to students’ hearts.

Scientists at Leiden University (Netherlands), Stuttgart University (Germany) and Ural Federal University (Russia) have successfully put forward a novel, computed, reaction mechanism that was experimentally tested and show that formaldehyde is formed at much earlier stages in the birthplaces of stars…

The year 2023 saw the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Wagner Group rebellion and wildfires and floods as all the weather records were smashed. Our most-read stories were about the climate crisis and the elections: here’s the list.

A team of astronomers of Leiden University and the University of Texas (Austin, United States) has discovered a new way to map distant galaxies. They did so by observing the fingerprint of oxygen in a distant galaxy, something that is usually not possible from Earth. The researchers will publish their…

Five projects with researchers from Leiden University have received a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to build or upgrade existing research facilities.

They are often referred to as ‘The Oscars of the Natural Sciences’: the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics. This year, the prize for physics went to the Event Horizon Telescope team, which took the first-ever picture of a black hole. Four Leiden astronomers were…

Astronomers led by Pieter van Dokkum have discovered a galaxy that barely contains any dark matter, which actually proves that dark matter does indeed exist. The research results will be published this week in Nature.

Not only dark matter, but also ordinary matter and dark energy are tracked in the largest ever cosmological computer simulation ever. In the FLAMINGO simulations, you can see virtual galaxies and clusters of galaxies emerging over the course of billions of years. This is no easy task: with more than…

Pope Francis has appointed astronomer Ewine van Dishoeck to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. She joins an illustrious list of Nobel Prize winners, such as Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrödinger. What is her view on this? An interview with our professor of Molecular astrop…

The Leiden wall formulae, Einstein's sink or the signature wall of Ehrenfest. It are just a few of Leiden's hidden science treasures. Alumnus from the Leiden Observatory Alex Pietrow described a few of these places on travel website Atlas Obscura.

'Make sure you separate yourself from your work.' And, 'Your dissertation doesn't have to be a magnum opus.' It was raining tips for PhD students at the humanities PhD event on well-being on Tuesday, 5 September.

On 28 June 2017 the Department of Child Law and the Van Vollenhoven Institute of Leiden Law School organized the colloquium ‘Minorities and The Criminal Justice System’, with James Bell as the keynote speaker.

The Dutch scientist prof. dr. Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Leiden Observatory, Leiden University and Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, will receive the 2018 James Craig Watson Medal from the american National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

The Astronomy & Society Group provides the focus for Leiden Observatory’s aim to engage the public with the wonders of the universe and share the scientific, technological, cultural and educational aspects of astronomy with society.

At Leiden Observatory, researchers investigate the origin of stars and their planetary systems. They detect and characterize planets around other stars (exoplanets). They study how stars and planets form. And they follow molecules from interstellar clouds to nascent planet systems. This way they address…

Simulations of galaxies help researchers understand astronomical observations better. The EAGLE simulation, a large project in which Leiden astronomers play a leading role, shows the evolution of the Universe, from just after the Big Bang to the present day.

The master's specialisation Astronomy and Cosmology at Leiden University covers all aspects of modern astrophysics, including observation, interpretation, simulation and theory. This programme is essentially based on combined research in astronomy and physics and is therefore open for students with…

Leiden University's interdisciplinary research programme SAILS funds young interdisciplinary scientists working at the intersection of AI and other fields. Researcher Matthijs Westera talks about his experiences working within SAILS and the Leiden academic community.

All supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies appear to have periods when they swallow matter from their close surroundings. But that is about as far as the similarities go. That's the conclusion reached by British and Dutch astronomers from their research with ultra-sensitive radio telescopes…

A European team of astronomers has discovered the largest stellar black hole in the Milky Way. It is more than thirty times as massive as our sun and is located in the constellation of Aquila, about two thousand light-years from Earth. The astronomers stumbled upon the black hole by chance while preparing…

Scientists are asking your help to find the origin of hundreds of thousands of galaxies that have been discovered by the largest radio telescope ever built: LOFAR. Where do these mysterious objects, which extend for thousands of light-years, come from? A new citizen science project called LOFAR Radio…

After almost twenty years the record for the most distant radio galaxy has been broken. A team of astronomers led by Leiden PhD candidate Aayush Saxena has discovered a radio galaxy from the time when the universe was just one billion years old. The galaxy is at a distance of 12 billion light years…

February 29 and 1 march 2020

The 2015 Dissertation Prize of the Global Neutrino Network has been awarded to Tri Astraatmadja, who was part of the Leiden/Nikhef ANTARES group during his PhD research. Astraatmadja receives the award for his thesis 'Starlight between the waves: In search of TeV photon emission from Gamma-Ray Bursts…

The research group of Eric Snijder, Professor of Molecular Virology (LUMC), has been conducting research on coronaviruses for decades. Then in March this year their work accelerated at an unprecedented rate. The first new results are now available: insight into how the virus replicates.

Exhibition

For the first time, astronomers have managed to take a photo of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. They used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes that together form a virtual telescope the size of the earth. The news was presented in six press conferences…

From the discovery of exoplanets to the hunt for extraterrestrial life. At the Astronomy Gala on 17 December in the concert hall in Leiden, astronomers looked back, but above all ahead. With King Willem-Alexander as guest of honour.

A galaxy is already incredibly large, but it can get even bigger. Astronomer Reinout van Weeren investigates clusters of galaxies, one of the largest structures in the universe. For his research into the origins and evolution of these clusters, he obtained an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros.…

How big is the universe? How do stars form and evolve? And does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? These main questions in astronomy are the themes of the new exhibition Above & Beyond, which was created in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The exhibition…

Concrete pillars without a roof, windows without glass, storeys without walls. It’s clearly evident that the South Cluster is being dismantled. Take a look at the photos!

A Dutch-led team of astronomers has discovered that high-mass stars are formed differently from their smaller siblings. Whereas small stars are often surrounded by an orderly disk of dust and matter, the supply of matter to large stars is a chaotic mess. The researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter…

An international team of scientists including Leiden's Joe Callingham has discovered nineteen red dwarf stars that unexpectedly emit radio waves. The outbursts possibly originate from interaction with exoplanets. The results of the research appear in two scientific publications.

On Sunday 29 October the annual open day of the Old Observatory will take place. During this day, people can visit the Old Observatory for free and enjoy the historic building.