UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL) IS FOUNDED IN 1826

Today, The Grandma has been reading about University College London, the public research university, that was established on a day like today in 1826.

University College London, which operates as UCL, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom.

 

It is a member institution of the federal University of London, and is the second-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and the largest by postgraduate enrolment.

Established in 1826, as London University (though without university degree-awarding powers), by founders inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham, UCL was the first university institution to be established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion.

It was also among the first university colleges to admit women alongside men in 1878, two years after University College, Bristol. Intended by its founders to be England's third university, politics forced it to accept the status of a college in 1836, when it received a royal charter and became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London, although it achieved de facto recognition as a university in the 1990s.

It has grown through mergers, including with the Institute of Ophthalmology (in 1995), 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).

More information: UCL

UCL has its main campus in the Bloomsbury area of central London, with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals elsewhere in central London and has a second campus, UCL East, at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. 

UCL is organised into 11 constituent faculties, within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres.

UCL operates 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, and administers the annual Orwell Prize in political writing.

In 2021/22, UCL had a total income of £1.75 billion, of which £525 million was from research grants and contracts. The university generates around £10 billion annually for the UK economy, primarily through the spread of its research and knowledge (£4 billion) and the impact of its own spending (£3 billion).

UCL is a member of numerous academic organisations, including the Russell Group and the League of European Research Universities, and is part of UCL Partners, the world's largest academic health science centre. It is considered part of the golden triangle of research-intensive universities in southeast England.

UCL has publishing and commercial activities including UCL Press, UCL Business and UCL Consultants.

UCL has many notable alumni, including the founder of Mauritius, the first Prime Minister of Japan, and one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA.  

UCL academics discovered five of the naturally occurring noble gases, discovered hormones, invented the vacuum tube, and made several foundational advances in modern statistics. 

As of 2022, 30 Nobel Prize winners and three Fields medallists have been affiliated with UCL as alumni or academic staff.

UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 as an alternative to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 

It took the form of a joint stock company, with shares sold for £100 (equivalent to $8,900 in 2021) to proprietors, under the name of London University, although without legal recognition as a university or the associated right to award degrees. London University's first warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first scientist to head a British university.

UCL is primarily based in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, in Central London. 

The main campus is located around Gower Street and includes the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences, economics, geography, history, languages, mathematics, management, philosophy and physics departments, the preclinical facilities of the UCL Medical School, the London Centre for Nanotechnology, the Slade School of Fine Art, the UCL Union, the main UCL Library, the UCL Science Library, the Bloomsbury Theatre, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, the Grant Museum of Zoology and the affiliated University College Hospital.

Close by in Bloomsbury are the UCL Cancer Institute, the UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, the UCL Faculty of the Built Environment (The Bartlett), the UCL Faculty of Laws, the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the UCL Institute of Education, the UCL School of Pharmacy, the UCL School of Public Policy and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies.

In 2014, it was announced that UCL would be building an additional campus at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, referred to as UCL East, as part of the development of the so-called Olympicopolis site at the southern edge of the park. UCL master planners were appointed in spring 2015, and the first University building was, at that time, estimated to be completed in time for academic year 2019/20.

Elsewhere in Central London are the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology adjacent to Moorfields Eye Hospital in Clerkenwell, the UCL Institute of Child Health adjacent to Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital and the Whittington Hospital campuses of the UCL Medical School, and a number of other associated teaching hospitals.

The UCL School of Management is on levels 38 and 50 (penthouse) of One Canada Square in the financial district of Canary Wharf. The UCL Observatory is in Mill Hill and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory is based in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey. The UCL Athletics Ground is in Shenley, Hertfordshire.

More information: University of London

A man who has never gone to school
may steal from a freight car;
but if he has a university education,
he may steal the whole railroad.

Theodore Roosevelt