You could write a book on Kraków’s Jagiellonian University, and indeed a number of boffins have. But what’s a university without its students, and Krakow’s job dodgers deserve more attention than most. Of the alumni none have achieved more than Nicolas Copernicus, a product of the class of 1492. Lauded as the founder of modern astronomy, it was he who asserted that the earth orbited the sun. Fortunately for him it took the church over 100 years to decide that agreeing with him merited being burnt at the stake. Other students of note include Jan Matejko, who would go on to paint many of Poland’s most revered works of art, including ‘The Battle of Grunwald’. Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II studied in the philology department, as did the Nobel Laureates Wislawa Szymborska and Ivo Andrie. Not that all students proved so diligent; Stanisław Lem, who would go on to pen the classic 'Solaris', also studied at Jagiellonian, but hated his medical studies so much he flunked his exams on purpose. From its early beginnings Jagiellonian’s students proved a bit of a handful – exempt from local justice and answerable only to the rector they frequently ran wild, the Hungarian students particularly prone to launching pogroms on the town's Jewish population. And if they sound bad then they’re not a patch on Faust and Twardowski, two weird sorcerers who allegedly studied at Jagiellonian before gaining notoriety for entering pacts with the devil. It’s not hard to feel sorry for Nawojka, the first female student to attend the uni. Some 300 years before women were officially admitted she managed to bypass discrimination by dressing as a lad.