The Physics institutes at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) remain among of the 75 best in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). And, as in the previous year, the JGU Physics institutes rank among the six best institutes of physics in Germany. The top three physics departments are those at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California, Berkley, in the United States of America. Among German universities, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz ranks at places 9 to 14, in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics category it is even one of the top eight.
Jiao Tong University Shanghai started to publish the annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) in 2003; the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy assumed publication of the ARWU from 2009. As the first global ranking system, it has attracted considerable worldwide attention. The ranking compares the excellence in research of more than 1,000 leading universities around the world. Main criteria used to evaluate research performance are publication citation rates and numbers of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal holders. Originally conceived as a ranking for entire universities, rankings for five broad subject fields such as the Natural Sciences were introduced in 2007, while in 2009, rankings for five individual subjects were introduced, i.e., Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Economics/Business.
"This splendid result once again confirms the excellent quality of the research being undertaken by our physicists here at Mainz University, who are also achieving high rankings in other university league tables," said Professor Dr. Georg Krausch, President of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In addition, physicists in Mainz have also performed spectacularly well in the recent Excellence Initiative by the German federal and state governments to promote top-level research at German universities: The PRISMA Cluster of Excellence, primarily a collaboration between particle and hadron physicists, is seen as being among the elite research groups worldwide.
