University of Osaka

About

The University of Osaka (大阪大学, Ōsaka daigaku), abbreviated as UOsaka or Handai (阪大), is a national research university in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. The university traces its roots back to Edo-era institutions Tekijuku (1838) and Kaitokudo (1724), and was officially established in 1931 as the sixth of the Imperial Universities in Japan, with two faculties: science and medicine. Following the post-war educational reform, it merged with three pre-war higher schools, reorganizing as a comprehensive university with five faculties: science, medicine, letters, law and economics, and engineering. After the merger with Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 2007, UOsaka became the largest national university in Japan by undergraduate enrollment. The official name of the university in English has been changed from "Osaka University" to "The University of Osaka (UOsaka)" as of April 2025.

UOsaka is one of the most productive research institutions in Japan. Numerous prominent scholars and scientists have attended or worked at UOsaka, such as Nobel Laureate in Physics Hideki Yukawa, Nobel Laureate in Medicine Shimon Sakaguchi, manga artist Osamu Tezuka, Lasker Award winner Hidesaburō Hanafusa, author Ryōtarō Shiba.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.