Lobachevsky National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University (NNSU, Lobachevsky University) is the oldest institution of higher education in Nizhny Novgorod Region, founded on January 17, 1916, as one of Russia's three People's Universities.[1] A classical university with the status of a national research university and a participant in the "Priority 2030" program, it has about thirty thousand students from 97 countries, nineteen faculties and institutes, and six research institutes.[2] Its main building is at 23 Gagarin Avenue; in January 2026 the university celebrated its 110th anniversary.[3]

The People's University

The idea of a higher education institution of its own first arose in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896, when the city was preparing for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition. After the revolutionary events of 1905, Mayor A. M. Memorsky proposed at a City Duma session on October 19 that a People's University be established in the city.[1]

The People's University opened on January 17, 1916, and became the first institution of higher education in Nizhny Novgorod.[1]

The First Soviet University

On March 28, 1918, the governorate executive committee decided to create a state university in the city; on May 22 the State Commission on Education approved the decision, and on June 25, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued a decree closing the Nizhny Novgorod Polytechnic Institute and establishing a state university.[1] The decree, signed by Lenin, completed the creation of the first Soviet university. Professor D. F. Sinitsyn became its first rector.

Classes began on September 16, 1918, with ten faculties from the start: mathematics, physics and chemistry, biology, history and philology, economics, workers' encyclopedic studies, mechanics, civil engineering, agronomy, and professional knowledge. In October 1918 a branch of the university with nine faculties opened in Sormovo.[1]

On March 29, 1922, owing to the severe economic situation, the board of Glavprofobr resolved to close Nizhny Novgorod University altogether. The governorate authorities did not allow this: on July 27, 1922, the governorate executive committee included the university's upkeep in the local budget, and the institution survived.[1]

Division and Return

In 1930, at the height of industrialization, six narrowly specialized institutes were created from the university's faculties — mechanical engineering, chemical, pedagogical, agricultural, construction, and medical. The classical university ceased to exist, but not for long: as early as 1931 it resumed operation with three faculties — physics and mathematics, biology, and chemistry — and in 1932 the Research Institute of Physics and Technology became part of it.[1]

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, the departments reorganized their work to meet the needs of the front and the factories; in 1944, while the war was still going on, a Research Institute of Chemistry was established at Gorky University.[1]

Radiophysics and Computational Mathematics

After the war the university grew quickly and more than once found itself the first in the country. In 1945 it established the first radiophysics faculty in the USSR, in 1956 the Research Institute of Radiophysics, in 1963 the country's first faculty of computational mathematics and cybernetics, and in 1964 the Research Institute of Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics.[1] This became one of the foundations for the development of the local radio-electronics industry and information technology.

In the second half of the 20th century, world-class scientific schools took shape at the university: the theory of oscillations of Academician A. A. Andronov, the crystallography of Academician N. V. Belov, the population genetics of Professor S. S. Chetverikov, the radiophysics of Academician A. V. Gaponov-Grekhov, the chemistry of organometallic compounds of Academician G. A. Razuvaev, the chemistry of high-purity substances of Academician G. G. Devyatykh, the theory of functions of Professor I. R. Braytsev, and the theory of dynamical systems of Professor Yu. I. Neymark.[1][4] In the humanities, the names of S. I. Arkhangelsky, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and founder of the Faculty of History and Philology, and of Professors S. A. Orlov, N. P. Sokolov, and B. N. Golovin are well known.[1] The laboratories of the university's institutes became the basis for the Nizhny Novgorod institutes of the Academy of Sciences.

The Lobachevsky Name and the Campus on Gagarin Avenue

On March 20, 1956, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Gorky University was named after Nikolay Ivanovich Lobachevsky — the great mathematician, a native of Nizhny Novgorod. This was preceded by joint work between university scholars and regional archivists, who established the exact date and place of his birth; the working group was headed by Academician Andronov.[1]

In the late 1950s, construction began on new buildings on Arzamas Highway — present-day Gagarin Avenue, where the university campus still stands today.[1] On February 18, 1976, the university was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.[1]

New Faculties and Institutes

At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when state funding for science collapsed, the university responded by opening new areas of study. In 1991 the "Higher School of General and Applied Physics" faculty appeared, and in the same year, by order of Rector A. F. Khokhlov, the Faculty of Law; in 1994 came the Faculty of Management and Entrepreneurship, in 1995 the Faculty of Finance, and in 1996 the Faculty of Social Sciences. In 2001 the faculties of Physical Culture and Sports and of Military Training opened, in 2002 the Faculty of International Relations, and in 2005 the Faculty of International Students.[1]

In 2006, UNN became one of six classical universities to win the first competition among higher education institutions implementing innovative educational programs under the national project "Education," and in 2009 it received the "National Research University" status.[1][4]

In 2012, with a government megagrant, the university opened not a single laboratory but an entire interdisciplinary institute of living systems; at the same time, Arzamas Pedagogical Institute, Arzamas Polytechnic College, Dzerzhinsk Institute for Advanced Training, and Nizhny Novgorod Commercial Institute were merged into it — giving UNN a second campus, in Arzamas.[1] In 2013, the university became one of fifteen universities to win the competition for state support of the competitiveness of Russian universities.

In 2013–2015, the faculties were consolidated into institutes: the Institute of International Relations and World History, the Institute of Economics and Entrepreneurship, the Institute of Biology and Biomedicine, the Institute of Information Technology, Mathematics, and Mechanics, and the Institute of Rehabilitation and Human Health.[1] In 2014, the university launched the Lobachevsky computing cluster, with a peak performance of 570 teraflops.[1][2]

The University Today

The university has about thirty thousand students from 97 countries, including roughly one thousand graduate and doctoral students; it employs about four hundred professors and one thousand two hundred associate professors and assistants, and more than 330 doctors of sciences, among them 19 full members and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[4][2] Its structure includes nineteen faculties and institutes and six research institutes.[2] Lobachevsky University is the leading university of the Nizhny Novgorod Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Harald zur Hausen, the 2008 Nobel laureate in medicine, is an honorary doctor of UNN.[4]

In addition to its teaching units, the university includes a supercomputer center, a biomedical cluster, a nanotechnology center, an innovation and technology center with a business incubator, a tiflo-information center for computer training of blind people, a main library, a publishing house with a print shop, and a complex of museums — zoological, archaeological, and ethnographic, a museum of the university's history, and a memorial museum of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory.[4] The university also owns the Botanical Garden in Dubyonki and a biological station in Staraya Pustyn.

Since December 2023, the university has been headed by Oleg Vladimirovich Trofimov, Doctor of Economic Sciences: the order appointing him for a five-year term was signed by Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov on December 27, 2023.[5] Before him, the rector was Elena Zagaynova.[5] The president of the university is Roman Strongin.

"Priority 2030"

Since 2021, UNN has taken part in the federal strategic academic leadership program "Priority 2030" and belongs to the second group of its participants, with funding of 460 million rubles; its status was confirmed in November 2025.[6]

The university is carrying out three strategic technology projects: "New Materials for High-Tech Manufacturing," "Software for Critical Information Infrastructure," and "Neuromorphic and Quantum Technologies of Artificial and Hybrid Intelligence." To implement the strategic project "New Materials for High-Tech Manufacturing," UNN plans to build an ultra-high-purity chemistry center on Levinka Street in Nizhny Novgorod: the Land Council of Nizhny Novgorod Region approved the allocation of the corresponding plot; the investment is estimated at 1.37 billion rubles, and the center is expected to develop materials and technologies for manufacturing semiconductor devices — microchips, microprocessors, sensors, and LEDs.[7] As part of this project, scientists at the UNN Artificial Intelligence Research Center of the Institute of Information Technologies, Mathematics and Mechanics (IITMM) developed a hybrid neural network for analyzing brain MRI scans that combines classical artificial intelligence with quantum technologies: on test data, the system recognized signs of a tumor with up to 98% accuracy, and with heavy noise in the images it maintained an accuracy of 96.6% versus 92.2% for a conventional neural network; the results were published in The European Physical Journal Special Topics.

In the 2020s, university scientists produced transparent ceramics from calcium fluorapatite that transmit visible and infrared light and are close in composition to bone tissue: the grain size is limited to under 150 nanometers, and when rare-earth metals are added, the material can replace single crystals in compact pulsed lasers; the proposed medical application is implantable transparent inserts that allow tissue healing to be observed without repeat operations.[8][9][6] The university also hosts the advanced engineering school "Space Communications, Radar, and Navigation," created together with Rosatom.[3]

110 years

On January 30, 2026, a celebration marking the 110th anniversary of the university's founding was held at the Gorky Nizhny Novgorod Drama Theater: more than seven hundred guests attended — partners, representatives of industrial enterprises, government bodies, information technology companies and banks, staff members, students, and graduates from different years.[3] The Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region, Gleb Nikitin, congratulated the university on its anniversary.[10] That same year also marked seventy years since the university took the name of Lobachevsky.[3]

See also

Sources

  1. unn.ru — History — Lobachevsky University (archive)
  2. unn.ru — Facts and Figures — Lobachevsky University (archive)
  3. unn.ru — Lobachevsky University Celebrated Its 110th Anniversary (archive)
  4. unn.ru — The University Today — Lobachevsky University (archive)
  5. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Oleg Trofimov Appointed Rector of UNN (archive)
  6. priority2030.unn.ru — UNN Priority 2030 (archive)
  7. Business News. Time to Earn — UNN Plans to Create a Center for Ultra-High-Purity Chemistry on Levinka Street in Nizhny Novgorod: The Land Council of Nizhny Novgorod Region Approved the Allocation of the Corresponding (archive)
  8. Newsroom24 — In the 2020s, University Scientists Produced Transparent Ceramics from Calcium Fluorapatite, Which Transmits Visible and Infrared Light and Is Close in Composition to Bone Tis
  9. Open Nizhny — UNN Scientists Taught AI to Find Tumors on MRI Scans Even in "Noisy" Images (archive)
  10. nobl.ru — Gleb Nikitin Congratulated N.I. Lobachevsky UNN on Its 110th Anniversary (archive)
  11. Vremya N — In 2026, UNN Scientists Learned to Produce Transparent Ceramics from Calcium Fluorapatite — a Material Close in Composition to Bone Tissue and Transmitting Visible and