University College London
Established in 1826 as London University by founders inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham, UCL was the first university institution established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion. It also makes the contested claims to be the third-oldest university in England and the first to have admitted women on equal terms with men.UCL became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London in 1836. It has grown through mergers, including with the Institute of Neurology (in 1997), the Royal Free Hospital Medical School (in 1998), the Eastman Dental Institute (in 1999), the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (in 1999), the School of Pharmacy (in 2012) and the Institute of Education (in 2014).
UCL's main campus is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London, with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals elsewhere in central London and satellite campuses in Adelaide, Australia and Doha, Qatar. UCL is organised into 11 constituent faculties, within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres. UCL is responsible for several museums and collections in a wide range of fields, including the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. In 2014/15, UCL had around 35,600 students and 12,000 staff (including around 7,100 academic staff and 980 professors) and had a total income of £1.18 billion, of which £427.5 million was from research grants and contracts.[1] UCL is a member of numerous academic organisations and is part of UCL Partners, the world's largest academic health science centre, and the 'golden triangle' of elite English universities.
UCL is one of the most selective British universities and ranks highly in national and international league tables. UCL's graduates are ranked among the most employable by international employers and its alumni include the "Father of the Nation" of each of India, Kenya and Mauritius, the founders of Ghana modern Japan and Nigeria, the inventor of the telephone, and one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. UCL academics have contributed to major advances in several disciplines; all five of the naturally-occurring noble gases were discovered at UCL by William Ramsay,hormones were co-discovered at UCL by Ernest Starling and William Bayliss, the vacuum tube was invented by UCL graduate John Ambrose Fleming while a faculty of UCL, and several foundational advances in modern statistics were made at UCL's statistical science department founded by Karl Pearson. There are at least 29 Nobel Prize winners and three Fields medalists amongst UCL's alumni and current and former staff.1826 to 1836 (London University) HistoryThe London University as drawn by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd and published in 1827–1828 (now the UCL Main Building)UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 under the name London University as a secular alternative to the religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge. London University's first Warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first scientist to head a British university.
Henry Tonks' 1923 mural The Four Founders of UCLDespite the commonly held belief that the philosopher Jeremy Bentham was the founder of UCL, his direct involvement was limited to the purchase of share No.633, at a cost of £100 paid in nine installments between December 1826 and January 1830. In 1828 he did nominate a friend to sit on the council, and in 1827 attempted to have his disciple John Bowring appointed as the first professor of English or History, but on both occasions his candidates were unsuccessful.[32] This suggests that while his ideas may have been influential, he himself was less so. However Bentham is today commonly regarded as the "spiritual father" of UCL, as his radical ideas on education and society were the inspiration to the institution's founders, particularly the Scotsmen James Mill (1773–1836) and Henry Brougham (1778–1868).In 1827, the Chair of Political Economy at London University was created, with John Ramsay McCulloch as the first incumbent, establishing one of the first departments of economics in England.In 1828 the university became the first in England to offer English as a subject[35] and the teaching of Classics and medicine began. In 1830, London University founded the London University School, which would later become University College School. In 1833, the university appointed Alexander Maconochie, Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, as the first professor of geography in the UK. In 1834, University College Hospital (originally North London Hospital) opened as a teaching hospital for the university medical school. In June 2011, the mining company BHP Billiton agreed to donate A$10 million to UCL to fund the establishment of two energy institutes – the Energy Policy Institute, based in Adelaide, and the Institute for Sustainable Resources, based in London. In November 2011 UCL announced plans for a £500 million investment in its main Bloomsbury campus over 10 years, and the establishment of a new 23-acre campus next to the Olympic Park in Stratford in the East End of London.It revised its plans of expansion in East London and in December 2014 announced to build a campus UCL East covering 11 acres and provide up to 125,000m2 of space on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.UCL East will be a part of the planned Olympicopolis that plans to transform the Olympic Park into a cultural and innovation hub where UCL will open its first school of design, a centre of experimental engineering and a museum of the future, along with a living space for studentThe School of Pharmacy, University of London merged with UCL on 1 January 2012, becoming the UCL School of Pharmacy within the Faculty of Life Sciences.In May 2012, UCL, Imperial College London and the semiconductor company Intel announced the establishment of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, a London-based institute for research into the future of citiesIn August 2012 UCL received criticism for advertising an unpaid research position; it subsequently withdrew the advert.UCL and the Institute of Education formed a strategic alliance in October 2012, including co-operation in teaching, research and the development of the London schools system.[88] In February 2014 the two institutions announced their intention to merge and the merger was completed in December 2014In October 2013 it was announced that the Translation Studies Unit of Imperial College London would move to UCL, becoming part of the UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society. In December 2013, it was announced that UCL and the academic publishing company Elsevier will collaborate to establish the UCL Big Data Institute. In January 2015 it was announced that UCL had been selected by the UK government to be one of the five founder members of the Alan Turing Institute (together with the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Warwick), an institute to be established at the British Library to promote the development and use of advanced mathematics, computer science, algorithms and Big DataIn 2015 UCL established a new School of Management focused on technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, replacing its Department of Management Science and Innovation, with plans to move to new premises in One Canada Square, Canary Wharf in May 2016.
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