University of Dhaka

The University of Dhaka , also known as Dhaka University or simply DU), is the oldest university in modern Bangladesh. Established in 1921 during the British Raj, it has made significant contributions to the modern history of Bangladesh. 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 Fazlur Rahman Khan (pioneer of modern structural engineering), Muhammad Yunus (winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, pioneer of Microcredit), Muhammad Shahidullah (famous educator, philologist, and linguist), Natyaguru Nurul Momen (the pioneer trailblazer of progressive culture, who was a student & a teacher as well, of Dhaka University), Serajul Islam Choudhury (the country's leading public intellectual and writer), Rehman Sobhan (social democratic economist), Mohammad Ataul Karim (physicist), Abul Fateh (one of the founding fathers of South Asian diplomacy), Buddhadeb Bose (20th-century Bengali poet), and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the founding father of Bangladesh). It also enjoyed associations with Satyendra Nath Bose, Vijayaraghavan, and Kazi Nazrul Islam. 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 political parties.