University of Dhaka

The University of Dhaka (Bengali: ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, also known as Dhaka University or simply DU), is the oldest university in modern Bangladesh. Established by British Imperial Government in 1921, it was modeled on Oxbridge education.

Dhaka University gained a reputation as the "Oxford of the East" during its early years, and contributed tremendously to modern South Asian history. 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.

The university's distinguished alumni include Satyendra Nath Bose (pioneer of Bose-Einstein statistics), Fazlur Rahman Khan (pioneer of modern structural engineering), Muhammad Yunus (winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize), K S Krishnan (co-discoverer of the Raman effect), Vijayaraghavan (co-discoverer of the PV number), Buddhadeb Bose (20th century Bengali poet), Rehman Sobhan (social democratic economist), Abdus Suttar Khan (American chemist and jet fuels inventor), Shamsur Rahman (poet laureate of Bangladesh), and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the founding father of Bangladesh). It also enjoyed associations with Kazi Nazrul Islam, Rabindranath Tagore and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Today, it is the largest public university in Bangladesh, with a student body of 33,000 and a faculty of 1,800. It was identified by AsiaWeek as one of the top 100 Universities in Asia. However since the 1990s, the university has suffered from intensely politicized, partisan and violent campus politics promoted by Bangladesh's feuding political parties.