University College London (UCL) is a public research
university in London, England and a constituent college of the federal
University of 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 earliest in England to be entirely
secular, admitting students regardless of their religion. It also makes the
disputed claim to have been the first to admit women on equal terms with men.
UCL's push for non-Anglicans to be allowed to take university degrees was one
of the driving factors behind the establishment of the University of London in
1836, when UCL become one of the two colleges affiliated to the University at
its foundation. In recent years 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 is the largest higher education institution in
London and the largest postgraduate institution in the UK by enrollment and is
regarded as one of the leading multidisciplinary research universities in the
world.
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. As of 2014, UCL had around 28,000 students and 11,000 staff (including
around 6,000 academic staff and 980 professors) and had a total income of £1.18
billion in 2014/15, of which £427.5 million was from research grants and contracts
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,
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, 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 32
Nobel Prize winners and three Fields Medalists amongst UCL's alumni and current
and former staff.
