with the University of the Arts Bremen. One of the instruments carried by the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, a miniature Mössbauer spectrometer, was developed at the university. The University of Mainz does not currently levy fees or tuition (Studiengebühren) for a regular course of study. Senior citizen students, auditing students, and certain postgraduate students may be subject to fees. Rankings It is ranked in the top 300 universities worldwide by the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2017 and Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2017. According to the report of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2018, the University of Mainz is one of the best universities in natural sciences in Germany. In the period under review from 2014 to 2016, the University of Mainz received the highest number of competitive grants in the natural sciences. The university also achieved the first place in physics. In a competitive selection process, the DFG selects the best research projects from researchers at universities and research institutes and finances them. The ranking is thus regarded as an indicator of the quality of research. Notable people Old University Johann Joachim Becher, physician, professor of medicine 1663–1664 Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer, economist, professor of cameral science 1784–1787 Andreas Joseph Hofmann, professor of law 1784–1793, president of the first democratically elected parliament in Germany Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, professor of anatomy and physiology 1784–1797 Georg Forster, naturalist and world traveller, university librarian 1788–1793 Professors (post 1946) Karl-Otto Apel (philosophy) Kai Arzheimer (political science) Herbert Braun (theology) Hauke Brunkhorst (education) Micha Brumlik (education) Paul J. Crutzen (chemistry, Nobel Prize 1995) Fritz Strassmann (physics) Jürgen Falter (political science) Hans Galinsky (American studies) Alfred Kröner (geology) Karl Cardinal Lehmann (theology) Thomas Metzinger (philosophy) Gottfried Münzenberg (physics) Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (communication studies) W. Pannenberg (theology) Rolf Peffekoven (economics) Klaus Rose (economics) Dorothee Sölle (theology) Beatrice Weder di Mauro (economics) Isabel Schnabel (economics) Werner Weidenfeld (political science, former adviser of German chancellor Helmut Kohl) Jürgen Gauß (theoretical chemistry) Uğur Şahin (medicine) Özlem Türeci (medicine) Alumni Alumni of the old University include theologian Friedrich Spee as well as Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, who studied law from 1790 to 1792, and revolutionary Adam Lux. Among notable alumni from the post-1946 University of Mainz are German politicians Malu Dreyer (SPD, Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate); Rainer Brüderle (FDP, Federal Minister for Economics and Technology); Horst Teltschik (former security advisor to Chancellor Helmut Kohl