Initially known as "Fudan Public School", Fudan University was founded in the year 1905. "Fudan", literally meaning "(heavenly light shines) day after day", indicates inexhaustible self-reliance and industriousness。

    Fudan consists of seventeen schools, ( which comprise sixty-six departments) and four independent departments: Physics, Chemistry, Macromolecular Science, and Environmental Science and Engineering. The University confers bachelor's degrees in sixty-eight academic disciplines, and master's degrees in two hundred and nine disciplines (with thirty-eight of them established by the University itself), and doctoral degrees in twenty-two Level I and one hundred and thirty-five Level II academic disciplines (with twenty-four of them established by the University itself). There are also twenty-five research stations that offer postdoctoral fellowships.

     Fudan now has an enrollment of 25,000 full-time degree candidates. Another 11,000 are studying at the schools of Continuing Education and Online Education. Besides, the University's population of foreign students ranks second in the whole country, which has reached 1,650 today.

     Fudan also actively incubates high-tech industries and encourages them to convert knowledge to power. Years of learning and discovering have yielded great benefits as well as profits. In return, the multi-pattern development of the high-tech industries helps the University with breathtaking efficiency to industrialize the research outcomes. Meanwhile, a group of University-sponsored enterprises is emerging, filled with passion and ambition. Fudan has thus created its signature style of doing business.