Uppsala's origins lie in the medieval church. The archbishop's see had been among Sweden's most important since Christianity arrived in the ninth century, and when Pope Sixtus IV granted the university charter, the archbishop became its first chancellor. For a century, the institution languished as Swedish students traveled instead to Wittenberg and other Protestant universities in Germany. The transformation came in 1593, when the Uppsala Synod established Lutheran orthodoxy throughout Sweden. Duke Charles, who would become King Charles IX, seized this moment. New privileges flowed to the university; professorial chairs multiplied. In 1624, King Gustavus Adolphus donated his entire personal property in two provinces, some 300 farms and mills, ensuring the university's financial future. The message was clear: this would be no mere theology school but a forge for the civil servants and administrators of an emerging great power.

The eighteenth century made Uppsala synonymous with scientific discovery. Anders Celsius, appointed professor in 1729, built an observatory and devised the temperature scale that bears his name (though his original version ran backward, with 100 degrees at freezing). But the era's true colossus was Carl Linnaeus, who arrived as professor of medicine and botany in 1741. In the university's botanical garden, first planted by Olaus Rudbeck in the 1650s, Linnaeus developed the binomial nomenclature that still organizes all biological knowledge. His former garden, the Linnaean Garden, survives today as a living museum of eighteenth-century botany. Students from across Europe flocked to Uppsala to study with Linnaeus, then fanned out across the world on collecting expeditions that transformed natural history.

The first woman to enter a Swedish university arrived at Uppsala in 1872. Betty Pettersson had worked for years as a private tutor before obtaining special royal dispensation to study before women were formally admitted. She completed Sweden's first academic degree earned by a woman in 1875. Ellen Fries followed, becoming Sweden's first female doctorate holder in 1883 with a dissertation in history. But progress remained painfully slow. Elsa Eschelsson earned a law degree and became the first female docent, yet was denied even an acting professorship because of her sex. After years of conflict with hostile colleagues, she died in 1911 from an overdose of sleeping powder. The constitution explicitly barred women from professorships until 1925, and Uppsala did not appoint a female professor until Gerd Enequist arrived in human geography in 1949.

Uppsala's student life follows patterns established four centuries ago. The thirteen student nations, originally grouping students by home province, date to the 1630s and still provide housing, social life, and a sense of belonging. Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna also introduced the exercitia, training in riding, fencing, dance, and drawing that every nobleman needed. Remarkably, some survive: the university still maintains stables with an Academy Stable Master and offers fencing through a private club. Music flourishes through the Royal Academic Orchestra, founded in 1627, and the renowned male choir Orphei Drängar. The oldest swimming club in the world, the Uppsala Swimming Society, was founded here in 1796, complete with mock graduation ceremonies awarding swimming 'degrees' of bachelor and magister that Swedish swim schools still use.

Today over 52,000 students fill Uppsala's historic buildings and modern laboratories. The Gustavianum, built in the 1620s and crowned with its distinctive anatomical-theater cupola, houses the university museum. Carolina Rediviva, the 'revived Carolina' completed in 1841, holds over five million volumes including the magnificent Codex Argenteus, a sixth-century Gothic Bible written in silver ink on purple parchment. Eight Nobel laureates studied or taught here; the university's alumni include UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, weapons inspector Hans Blix, and countless Swedish politicians and clergymen. The botanical gardens donated by Gustav III sprawl across baroque terraces below the castle. Five centuries after that papal bull arrived, Uppsala remains what it has always been: the place where Sweden thinks about itself.