Sept. 10 – “The essence of mathematics is its freedom,” said German mathematician Georg Cantor, expressing all his love for the topic, in which the University of Parma now excels at the international level. This was revealed in the annual ranking of universities published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The Academic Ranking of World Universities recorded, for the first time in history, the entrance of one of the University of Parma’s departments in the selective ranking: Parma’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is among the top 150 Departments of Mathematics in the world. Other Italian universities in the ranking include the University of Milan, the University of Pisa and the University of Rome La Sapienza (all placed higher than Parma, between the 76th and 100th place). Between the 101st and the 150th position, alongside Parma, there are the Universities of Milan Polytechnic, the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, the University of Padova and the University of Pavia. “For the University of Parma – said the university in a statement – this is an extremely important recognition: the department has excellent research groups in all three traditional branches of pure mathematics (calculus, mathematical physics and geometry). These groups produce results of undisputed quality and often succeed in getting their projects for major international funding. The Shanghai statistics takes account of their excellence: for example it values publications on the most prestigious scientific journals, and the number of highly cited researchers. In both areas, Parma can boast important names and numbers.” The Shanghai ranking also confirms the University of Parma and its Harvard University ranking, between the 400th and the 500th position in the world rankings.
