A good amount of the dissertations defended at the Royal Academy of Turku 1642-1828 have been digitized and published at the Doria-database.
The Academy was the second university established in the Swedish realm. Until 1828 it was the only centre of academic learning in Finland. After Turku burnt in 1827, and as the Russian authorities who have annexed Finland to Russian empire in 1809 wanted to release the ties to Swedish tradition, the university moved to Helsinki.
While the academy resided in Turku, almost 4500 dissertation were defended there. A list of the dissertations was published in early 1960s, and now all 1778 dissertations printed in Latin or Swedish - ca. 45 000 pages - have been digitized. The work will continue in near future. The earliest dissertations were published mostly in Latin, but during the 18th century Swedish - the mother tongue of learned people also in Finland - was used more frequently.
Dissertations were quite frequently written by the supervisor: the young defendant's task was to show, that he was capable to discuss about the subject of the dissertation and defend its findings. As a result, many dissertations are works of proven scholars. The collection includes for example dissertations guided by Pehr Kalm, who became famous in the 18th century for his travel books of North America.
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