The Australian National University is unique among its contemporaries as the only Australian university established by an Act of Federal Parliament, in 1946. It is also one of Australia’s most research-intensive universities, with a high ratio of academic staff to students.

The University campus has over 200 buildings and occupies 145 hectares adjacent to the city centre of Canberra.

The University also has smaller campuses:

    * Mt Stromlo Observatory (west of Canberra)
    * Siding Spring Observatory (near Coonabarabran, western New South Wales (NSW))
    * North Australia Research Unit (Darwin, Northern Territory)
    * Kioloa (coastal campus near Bawley Point, on the NSW South Coast)

Some interesting facts and figures about our unique University:

A recent independent quality review of the University found it ranked among the world’s best research universities, with 77 per cent of external assessors ranking ANU as one of the top 50 universities in their field in the world — including 44 per cent who rated ANU in the world’s top 25 universities.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education’s Academic Ranking of World Universities has ranked ANU ahead of every other university in the Southern Hemisphere two years in a row.

ISIHighlyCited, a ranking of researchers who have made fundamental contributions to their disciplines in the last 20 years, identifies 21 ANU researchers among the 50 Australians at the top of their field.
 
ANU has more Federation Fellows – lucrative fellowships awarded by the Australian Research Council – than any other Australian university.

ANU has more members of the Royal Society - the world’s oldest scientific academy - on staff than any other Australian university.

The University has 13,487 students, representing 94 countries.
 
ANU has around 3,600 staff.
 
There are more than two million volumes – and one of the largest collections on the Asia-Pacific outside of the region - in the University’s libraries.
 
A “green” campus, ANU has more than 10,000 trees within its grounds. In 2003 the University was awarded the Silver Greenhouse Challenge Award at the annual Australian Engineering Excellence Awards, placing it second of 800 signatories.
 
The oldest building on campus is Old Canberra House, built in 1913. It currently houses the Humanities Research Centre and Centre for Cross Cultural Research, but was once home to the British High Commission.