The University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska was founded on October 23, 1944, three months after the
Liberation of Lublin by the
Red Army. Prof. Henryk Raabe became the first Rector, and would be the head of the university until 1948. On 3 April 1946, The university was gifted a 17,3-
hectare (173,000 m2) land grant, on then outskirts of the city, for the future
Campus . This would later be expanded to 80 hectares (800,000 m2). 1946 also marks the year when the Botanical Gardens, and the
Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska Journal, were created. Initially, the university was made up of four faculties:
Medicine, Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine, and Life Sciences. In 1949, Faculty of Law was created. One year later, the faculty of Medicine was excluded from the institution, and became the
Medical University of Lublin. Similar fate was shared by the faculty of Life Sciences, when in 1955, the Faculty of Agriculture became the
University of Life Sciences in Lublin. During the 1950s, more faculties were created, such as: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Earth Sciences, Languages, and Economics. The 1960s and 70s were marked by a rapid expansion of the Lublin Campus. New buildings were created for each of the faculties, the university library was created, along with residences for students, a sports hall, and a
house of culture Chatka Żaka. Most of these changes were initiated by then rector, Grzegorz Leopold Seidler. In 1969, MCSU opened a
branch campus in the city of
Rzeszów. In 2001, that campus would merge with other institutions of the city to form the
University of Rzeszów. Major changes happened in 1989. Caused by the
fall of communism in Poland, most of the faculties had to be reorganized. In 2014, MSCU opened a branch campus in
Puławy, and in 2020, three new facilities were opened in Lublin for the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, and the Institute of Psychology. == Reputation ==