On June 19th 1999, the European Ministers of Education signed the
Bologna Dec laration, with which they agreed that the European
university education should be uniformized throughout Europe and based
on the two cycle bachelor master's sys tem. The Institute for
Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University quickly responded to this new
challenge and created an international master's programme in Theoret
ical Physics which started running in the summer of 2000. At present,
the master's programme is a so called prestige master at Utrecht
University, and it aims at train ing motivated students to become
sophisticated researchers in theoretical physics. The programme is built
on the philosophy that modern theoretical physics is guided by universal
principles that can be applied to any sub?eld of physics. As a result,
the basis of the master's programme consists of the obligatory courses
Statistical Field Theory and Quantum Field Theory. These focus in
particular on the general concepts of quantum ?eld theory, rather than
on the wide variety of possible applica tions. These applications are
left to optional courses that build upon the ?rm concep tual basis given
in the obligatory courses. The subjects of these optional courses in
clude, for instance, Strongly Correlated Electrons, Spintronics, Bose
Einstein Con densation, The Standard Model, Cosmology, and String
Theory.
