page_title: Gdańsk University of Technology
section_title: Historic places
hierarchical_section_title: Gdańsk University of Technology / Historic places
caption_attribution_description: Español: El Edificio Principal.
context_page_description: The Gdańsk University of Technology is a technical university in the Wrzeszcz borough of Gdańsk, and one of the oldest universities in Poland. It has nine faculties and with 41 fields of study and more than 18 thousand undergraduate, as well as about 626 doctoral students. It employs 2768 people, including 1313 academic teachers.
  Some degree courses and various specialisations are taught in English. Moreover, some of the courses offered by GUT are unique in Poland, for instance ones in Construction Chemistry, Nanotechnology, Geodesy and Cartography, as well as Engineering of Natural Resources.
  Students have access to specialist laboratories, lecture theatres with multimedia facilities, a library with 1.2 million volumes and various sports facilities. Undergraduates can also join one or more of 60 student science or language societies as well as other organisations.
  GUT is the first and only Polish university to be a member of the CDIO Initiative, founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
context_section_description: The main building, designed by Hermann Eggertt and Albert Carsten, was built between 1900 and 1904 and constructed at the same time as the Electro-Technical Institute, Machine Laboratory and the Faculty of Chemistry. All the buildings were designed in the style of the Northern Renaissance with the elements of Art Nouveau. Several stone images that decorate the front represent in symbols the purpose of the building. The Medusa head above the main entrance protects the building against intruders and signifies energy. The images above the eastern side gate are a lighthouse and the tower of St. Mary's Church, while those over the western gate are a partially damaged likeness of a steam engine and a bow of a ship. Portraits of Prussian scientists and pioneers of the 19th-century engineering are to be found above the windows of the upper ground floor – the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, physicist Gotthilf H. L. Hagen, a manufacturer of steam engines Johann F. A. Borsig and a naval architect Ferdinand Schichau. The ornamental gutters are decorated with copper spouts in the shape of four male figures holding water monsters.
  The Clock Tower destroyed in 1945 was restored to the roof of the main building on the 13th of May 2012. The tower is 18m high, weighs 15 tons and is crowned with a gilded image of the Allegory of Science. The main building encloses inner courtyards covered by glass domes designed by W. Czabański and Z. Wilk and installed in 2004. In 2012 the South Courtyard was officially renamed in honour of Johannes Hevelius. The Foucault pendulum is designed to show the rotation of the Earth on its axis.  It is named after the French physicist who first performed a similar experiment at the Paris Pantheon in 1851. The machine that made its appearance in 2005 in the South Courtyard of Gdansk University of Technology is a 64 kg metal disc suspended on a 26m arm. The movement of the pendulum is easy to follow because of a laser beam. An electromagnet fixed at the point of suspension powers the movement of the pendulum that would have otherwise stopped. Reliefs in the window niches above the Foucault pendulum show Johannes Hevelius, a design of a reflective sundial (on the left) and a rotating map of the sky with a sextant. These stainless steel reliefs have been made by Robert Kaja. A relief of a well-known Gdańsk resident D.G. Fahrenheit was unveiled in the North Courtyard in October 2013. Fahrenheit was a physicist, engineer, inventor and the creator of a mercury thermometer temperature scale. There are two portraits of the great physicist. The first can be found in a window niche. The other is covered with a thick glass pane. Its upper section looks like a network of blood vessels, while the blue-tinted section at the bottom shows crystal-like structures that can often be seen on glass when temperature is lower than 0 °C or 32 °F. In the middle there is an image of a Fahrenheit thermometer.
caption: Gargoyles
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