Portraits

Rector portraits

Rector is the head of the University, according to UoB law "supreme head of the management, and spokesman for the university."

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) is best known as a polar explorer, but was also a scientist, writer, diplomat and philanthropist. He was internationally renowned for his exploits in Greenland and the Arctic, and in Norway he was so popular that one discussed the "Nansen fever".

Ivar Aasen

Arne Mæland’s bust of the Norwegian linguist Ivar Aasen was erected in the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Noregs Mållag (The Norwegian Language Society). Aasen is considered the greatest linguist in Norway.

Henrik Wergeland

Inside the HF library there is a sketch of the famous statue of Henrik Wergeland in Studenterlunden in Oslo. The sketch is a small, full figure statue in gilded plaster. It shows Wergeland as the Poet, a monumental construction that we can only glimpse in the limited format of the sketch.

Jo Visdal: Gerhard Armauer Hansen, 1900.

Discoverer of the leprosy bacillus

Gerhard Armauer Hansen (1841-1912) is the most famous Norwegian doctor through time. His discovery of the leprosy bacillus in 1873 was not only a breakthrough in leprosy work, it was also the first case where it was proved that a microorganism could cause chronic disease in humans.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910) is considered along with Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie and Alexander Kielland as one of “the great four”, the leading poets in late nineteenth century literature in Norway. Among Bjørnson’s most famous texts are the tale of En glad Gut (A Happy Boy) and the Norwegian...

Robert Kloster

Robert Kloster (1905-1979) was the first professor of art history at the University of Bergen. The bronze bust portrays him at a large scale, as a strict, visionary man.

Peter Waage

Peter Waage (1833-1900) was a Norwegian chemist, known especially for having developed Guldberg and Waage's law with his brother-in-law Cato M. Guldberg. Guldberg the mathematician did the calculations, while Waage experimented with the speed of chemical reactions. Their law of mass action is really...

Cato M. Guldberg

Cato M. Guldberg (1836-1902) was a mathematician and physicist. Together with chemist Peter Waage he developed the Guldberg and Waage law of mass action, which would be of great importance for the further development of physical chemistry.

Vilhelm Bjerknes

Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862-1951) was a physicist and meteorologist, and is renowned as one of the founders of modern weather forecasting. He was professor of mechanics and mathematical physics at Stockholm University from 1893 to 1907, but in 1897 he made a discovery that would lead him into geophysics....

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the most famous writer and poet in the history of Norway, and is considered among the greatest in world literature. After Shakespeare, he is the world's most performed playwright.

Plato (429-347 BC)

Plato is one of the greatest philosophers and literati in world history. Through his writings, preserved from fourth-century Athens, he has had enormous influence on the future of thinking, especially in the West and the Middle East. Plato is particularly known for his idea of a World of Forms that...

What makes a picture a portrait?

The print Red Adair looks abstract, with red stripes that seem to run out in small streams, against a blue and white background. As we look at it, the outline of the man appears in the vertical lines. Then we suddenly code something resembling facial features into the color patches. But it is...