The Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), founded in 1607, is a research university rich in tradition, attracting around 25,700 students. In addition to a wide range of courses – from classical natural sciences to law and economics, social and educational sciences to language and cultural sciences – it offers a range of life sciences, which is unique in Hesse and humanities and veterinary medicine, agricultural, environmental and nutritional sciences, and food chemistry. Among the great personalities who have researched and taught at JLU are a number of Nobel Prize winners, including Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (Nobel Prize for Physics 1901) and Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize 2004). Since 2006, research at JLU has been continuously funded in the Excellence Initiative and the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments.