The University of Padova is one of the oldest top universities in Europe. It was founded in 1222 to advocate and defend academic and teaching freedom. The best majors in Italy are physics, pharmacy, agronomy, veterinary science, industrial engineering, information engineering, psychology, economics, and statistics. Professor Galileo Galilei taught at the University of Padua in 1592-1610; Elena L. Cornaro-Piscopia graduated from Padua in 1678, becoming the world’s first female graduate. The University of Padua is the world’s leading research university: it has been consistently ranked as “the university with the highest quality research results” in two reports so far by the National Agency for Evaluation of Italian universities and research institutions (ANVUR). The number of academic articles cited by the university is in the top 10% among the best universities in Europe.
