In 2009, UPMC celebrated both the reconstuction of the Zamansky tour and nine centuries of university activity on the site of the Saint Victor Abbey, renowned as a center of Western intellectual renaissance, with a famous library and a training center for clerics.

This school, founded by Guillaume de Champeaux in 1109, played a major role in the intellectual effervescence of the Latin Quarter for several centuries.

Grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and even technology were all taught there.

After the Revolution, the site was occupied by various warehouses, then the “halle aux vins” (the Paris wine market), before being reintegrated into the world of research as a part of the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris in 1959.

Under André Malraux’s leadership, the decision on the Albert project and the tower was made in 1963. And nine hundred years later, UPMC continues the quest for knowledge of the highest order, in the heart of Paris.

University Pierre et Marie Curie has come to embody French excellence in science and medicine. The Shanghai 2014 University list ranks UPMC 6th in Europe and 35th in the world.

UPMC carries out high-level research, as attested by the numerous international prizes and awards it has received and its collaborations with more than a hundred overseas universities.

The University is made up of seven UFR (Research and Training Units) in Chemistry, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, Life Science, plus Earth and Environmental Sciences and Biodiversity.

It also incorporates the Ecole polytechnique universitaire, the Paris Astrophysics Institute, the Henri Poincaré Institute and three marine stations at Roscoff, Banyuls-sur-Mer and Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Its laboratories have formed associations with major research bodies and such renowned partners as the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), INSERM (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research), INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research), IRD (French Research Institute for Development), IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea), CEA (Nuclear Energy Research Centre) and the CNES (French Space Agency).

Built during the fifties and sixties, on the former site of the Halle aux Vins market, the Jussieu campus was designed to symbolise, in the words of the Dean, Marc Zamanski, "the embodiment of scientific thought in the very heart of Paris", the Science Faculty, with its position right in the centre of the Latin Quarter, thus ensuring, "the intellectual and spiritual continuity of the long university heritage of Paris". From 1968, the rapid growth of the Paris Faculty of Sciences led to the creation of several universities. Founded in 1971, Paris 6, its principal heir, shared the Jussieu campus with Paris 7 University and the Institute of Physics of the Earth.

In 1974, the Paris 6 University took on a prestigious legacy, changing its official name to "University Pierre et Marie Curie", to reflect its ongoing endeavours to perpetuate the scientific heritage of these illustrious predecessors.

Currently the largest scientific and medical complex in France, UPMC is involved in every research domain and has an academic reputation of the very highest order, as attested by the numerous awards and prizes that its researchers regularly receive and the many international collaborations it has formed in countries across the five continents.