- published: 06 Sep 2011
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Aarhus (Danish pronunciation: [ˈɒːhuːˀs] ( listen)) is the second-largest city in Denmark. The principal port of Denmark, Aarhus is on the east side of the peninsula of Jutland in the geographical center of Denmark. Aarhus is the seat of the council of Aarhus municipality with 315,193 inhabitants and 252,213 (1 January 2012) in the inner urban area. According to Aarhus municipality, the "Greater Aarhus" area has a population of about 1.2 million people. The city claims the unofficial title "Capital of Jutland".
Aarhus is the main and biggest city in the East Jutland metropolitan area (Danish: Byregion Østjylland), which is a co-operation in eastern Jutland with 17 municipalities. With more than 1.2 million people living in the East Jutland metropolitan area it represents approximately 23% of the population of Denmark. Aarhus has the second-largest urban area in Denmark after Copenhagen.
The city was mentioned for the first time by Adam of Bremen who stated that "Reginbrand, bishop of the church of Aarhus (Harusa)" participated in a church meeting in the city of Ingelheim in Germany.
Aarhus University (Danish: Aarhus Universitet) (abbr.: AU), located in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, is Denmark's second oldest and largest university. The university was founded in 1928 and has 43,600 students.
Denmark's first professor of sociology was a member of the faculty of Aarhus University (Theodor Geiger, from 1938–1952), and in 1997 Professor Jens Christian Skou received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump. In 2010 Dale T. Mortensen, a Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences together with his colleagues Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides.
Aarhus University was founded on September 11, 1928 as Universitetsundervisningen i Jylland ('University Teaching in Jutland') with an enrollment of 64 students. Classrooms were rented from the Technical College and the teaching corps consisted of one professor of philosophy and four associate professors of Danish, English, German, and French. Until then the University of Copenhagen was the only university in Denmark.