Mihăileană Academy

 

 

Higher education appeared in Moldavia in 1634, during the reign of Vasile Lupu, when he founded the Vasiliană Academy. Initially it was taught in Slavonic and Latin, and later Greek was added. The model of the Movilă Academy was taken over, from Kiev, where the first teachers came from.
Symbolically, the role of this institution was continued by the Royal Academy, founded in 1707 by Prince Antiochus Cantemir, the brother of the scholar Dimitrie Cantemir. Gregory III Ghica modernized it (1776) to align with European universities and introduced the study of mathematics, natural sciences and modern philosophy in Greek.

Gheorghe Asachi was the one who introduced engineering studies and "hotărnicie" in 1813, the great novelty being the Romanian language in which they were taught. His encyclopedic culture allowed him to teach a course in theoretical mathematics whose practical applications in geodesy and architecture contributed to the founding of higher technical education in Iasi.

The Mihăileană Academy (named after Mihail Sturdza-Vodă) was inaugurated on June 16, 1835, was located at the Socola seminary and offered the possibility to study philosophy, law, theology, and, later) analytical and descriptive geometry, correlated with engineering, agronomy, mineralogy and geology.
Thus, although it is said that the first University in Romania is the University „Al. I. Cuza ”, it is clear that higher education appeared in Moldova long before and benefited from the contribution of important people of culture with an encyclopedic instruction, concerned with the education of young people and, very importantly, the support of Romanian language courses.

The Romanian Academy, in the sense we use today, has its origins in the Romanian Literary Society (1866), which became a year later the Romanian Academic Society, and in 1879 the Romanian Academy. From that moment on, it functioned uninterruptedly as an authority on morality and scientific independence.
It was abolished in 1948 by the communist regime that established the Academy of the Romanian People's Republic instead and returned to its original name and destination in 1990.