Collège de France
French higher education and research establishment in Paris
The Collège de France (French pronunciation: [kɔlɛʒ də fʁɑ̃s] ; formerly known as Collège royal or Collège impérial or Collège des trois langues), founded in 1530 by Francis I of France, is a higher education and research establishment (grand établissement) in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The Collège de France has been considered to be France's most prestigious research establishment. It is an associate member of PSL University.
Research and teaching are closely linked at the Collège de France, whose ambition is to teach "the knowledge that is being built up in all fields of literature, science and the arts".
Overview
As of 2021, 21 Nobel Prize winners and 9 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with the Collège. It does not grant degrees. Each professor is required to give lectures where attendance is free and open to anyone. Professors, about 50 in number, are chosen by the professors themselves, from a variety of disciplines, in both science and the humanities. The motto of the Collège is Docet Omnia, Latin for "It teaches everything"; its goal is to "teach science in the making" and can be best summed up by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phrase: "Not acquired truths, but the idea of freely-executed research" which is inscribed in golden letters above the main hall.
The public source identifies “Collège de France” as french higher education and research establishment in Paris. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Collège, France and French.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q202660. VIAF identifies the subject as 146442710. The Library of Congress control number is n79110131. Authority coordinates are 48.849, 2.346. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1530 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Collège de France” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.