Located halfway between Hamburg and Frankfurt, near to the Harz mountains, the town of Göttingen is best known for its university which was founded in 1734 and gradually became one of the most renowned and the most visited university of Europe. The University of Göttingen has produced well-known historical figures, philosophers, mathematicians and scientists in various disciplines, including 47 Nobel laureates who had either studied or worked here. John von Neumann, Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, David Hilbert, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, to name a few, were all students at the University of Göttingen. Famous physicists Max Planck, Neils Bohr, and Max Born taught here.
Understandably, Göttingen became officially a 'University town' with nearly one-third of its current population either students or faculty and staff employed by the university. And like most university towns, Göttingen has developed its own quaint traditions. One of them involves the bronze statue at a fountain in front of the old town hall.
