According to some stories, Einstein washed his hands there only once. According to others, students moved it as a joke. Whatever the case may be, Einstein's sink has enjoyed mythical status among students and employees of the Faculty of Science for decades. But what is the real story? Alumnus Alex Pietrow…

A 35-year-old uranium crystal will not disclose its secret: what causes a dramatic phase transition at 17.5 Kelvin? Thanks to a new artificial intelligence approach, half of the possible explanations are excluded, but the definitive answer remains to be found. 'It is very frustrating', says physicist…

Dear friends of the NVIC,

On Thursday 15 February 2018, the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law welcomed Roel Janssen, financial and economic journalist and writer, for the fifteenth Hazelhoff Guest Lecture.

Leiden University regularly confers honorary doctorates, and presents awards and prizes.

This week Dr. Lara Weiss (of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden), who together with Dr Christian Greco (of the Museo Egizio in Turin) heads the project "The Walking Dead: The Making of a Cultural Geography in Saqqara", was visited by the NVIC team. During the visit she introduced them to the…

Dear friends of the NVIC

Fake news a new phenomenon? Not according to Rens Tacoma and Indira Huliselan. In an NWO project, the associate professor and PhD student will delve into the twisting, scheming and tampering with facts that went on thousands of years ago.

TEXTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. Highlights from the Collection of the Leiden Papyrological Institute. Online exhibition on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation ‘Het Leids Papyrologisch Instituut’ in 2015.

On Tuesday 12 April Angus Mol and Aris Politopoulos have been awarded the fourth LUCAS Publieksprijs.

The FOI project has a number of topics it aims to investigate. These are: State, Economy, Culture and Papyri. You will find links to bibliographies on this page.

This section provides an overview of online tools for the study of the medieval Low Countries. The websites linked down below are often times both available in Dutch and English.

Ghazwan Yaghi was a leading archaeologist and researcher in Damascus but had to flee in 2014 because of the war. An NWO 'Refugees in Science' grant has enabled him to pick up where he left off in his academic career. 'I've found myself again in this project.'

“BABYLON” investigates the extent of the similarities between Babylonian and post-exilic forms of cultic and social organization and explores the question how Babylonian models could have influenced the restoration effort in Jerusalem.

Many an archaeologist, at some point in their career, is asked what type of dinosaur they discovered. Instead of once again patiently explaining that we do not do dinosaurs, the Faculty Board has now decided to listen to society’s call. ‘It is clear that the general public feels that dinosaurs are relevant…

An age-old expression in Classical Chinese is yǔ zhòng bù tóng 與眾不同, meaning ‘out of the ordinary.’ It could have been the motto of Burchard J. Mansvelt Beck, who taught that language for decades at Leiden University. What was different about him? He was extraordinarily gifted, helpful, and above all…

The biweekly Lunch Time Seminar is an online only event, but it is not publicly accessible in real-time. If you would like to attend one of the upcoming sessions, please send an email to sails@liacs.leidenuniv.nl.