Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vilnius University was founded on the 1st of April, 1579, when Stephen Báthory granted its formal charter. Báthory held the titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull on the 30th of October that same year, recognizing it as a full university.
The first rector of Vilnius University was Piotr Skarga, who recruited scholars from across Europe and oversaw the expansion of the library. The library itself had been founded in 1570 by Bishop Walerian Protasewicz, who also established the precursor college.
Tsar Nicholas I closed Vilnius University on the 1st of May, 1832, following student participation in the 1831 uprising against Russian imperial rule. The university remained closed for nearly nine decades. It reopened as Stefan Batory University on the 28th of August, 1919.
Czesław Miłosz studied at Stefan Batory University, the name the institution carried between 1919 and 1939. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.
BEBRAS, or the International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking, was established in 2004 by Professor Valentina Dagienė of Vilnius University. The challenge promotes computer science and computational thinking among school students of all ages and has been adopted in over 60 countries.
Professor Virginijus Šikšnys of Vilnius University contributed fundamental research to the development of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, sometimes called 'gene scissors.' He received the Kavli Prize in nanosciences, the Warren Alpert prize, and the Novozymes prize for this work.