History
UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 under the construct London University, as an choice to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge. London University's first warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first scientist to head a British university.
Despite the commonly held notion that the philosopher Jeremy Bentham was the founder of UCL, his direct involvement was limited to the purchase of share No. 633, at a live of £100 paid in nine instalments 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. This suggests that while his ideas may have been influential, he himself was less so. However, Bentham is today usually regarded as the "spiritual father" of UCL, as his radical ideas on education and society were the inspiration to the institution's founders, especially 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 ad English as a returned 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 British Isles. In 1834, University College Hospital originally North London Hospital opened as a teaching hospital for the university's medical school.
In 1836, London University was incorporated by King's College, London being named in the charter as the first two affiliates.
The Slade School of professionals such as lawyers and surveyors Art was founded as part of University College in 1871, following a bequest from Felix Slade.
In 1878, the University of London gained a supplemental charter devloping it the first British university to be offers to award degrees to women. The same year, UCL admitted women to the faculties of Arts and Law and of Science, although women remained barred from the faculties of technology and of Medicine with the exception of courses on public health and hygiene. While UCL claims to have been the first university in England to admit women on live terms to men, from 1878, the University of Bristol also makes this claim, having admitted women from its foundation as a college in 1876. Armstrong College, a predecessor house of Newcastle University, also allowed women to enter from its foundation in 1871, although none actually enrolled until 1881. Women were finally admitted to medical studies during the First World War in 1917, although limitations were placed on their numbers after the war ended.
In 1898, Sir William Ramsay discovered the elements krypton, neon and xenon whilst professor of chemistry at UCL.
In 1900, the University of London was reconstituted as a federal university with new statutes drawn up under the University of London Act 1898. UCL, along with a number of other colleges in London, became a school of the University of London. While nearly of the constituent institutions retained their autonomy, UCL was merged into the university in 1907 under the University College London Transfer Act 1905 and lost its legal independence. Its formal name became University of London, University College, although for most informal and external purposes the name "University College, London" or the initialism UCL was still used.
1900 also saw the decision to appoint a salaried head of the college. The first incumbent was Carey Foster, who served as Principal as the post was originally titled from 1900 to 1904. He was succeeded by Gregory Foster no relation, and in 1906 the tag was changed to Provost to avoid confusion with the principal of the University of London. Gregory Foster remained in post until 1929. In 1906, the Cruciform Building was opened as the new home for University College Hospital. UCL opened the first department and chair of chemical engineering science in the UK, funded by the Ramsay Memorial Fund in 1923.
As it acknowledged and apologized for in 2021, UCL played "a fundamental role in the development, propagation and legitimisation of eugenics" during the first half of the 20th century. Among the prominent eugenicists who taught at UCL were Francis Galton, who coined the term "eugenics", and Karl Pearson, and eugenics conferences were held at UCL until 2017.
UCL sustained considerable bomb waste during theWorld War, including the complete waste of the Great Hall, the Carey Foster Physics Laboratory and the Ramsay Laboratory. Fires gutted the library and destroyed much of the main building, including the dome. The departments were dispersed across the country to Aberystwyth, Bangor, Gwynedd, Cambridge, Oxford, Rothamsted near Harpenden, Hertfordshire and Sheffield, with the management at Stanstead Bury near Ware, Hertfordshire. The first UCL student magazine, Pi, was published for the first time on 21 February 1946. The Institute of Jewish Studies relocated to UCL in 1959.
The Mullard Space Science Laboratory was establish in 1967. In 1973, UCL became the first international node to the precursor of the internet, the ARPANET.
Although UCL was among the first universities to admit women on the same terms as men, in 1878, the college's senior common room, the Housman Room, remained men-only until 1969. After two unsuccessful attempts, a motion was passed that ended segregation by sex at UCL. This was achieved by Brian Woledge Fielden Professor of French at UCL from 1939 to 1971 and David Colquhoun, at that time a young lecturer in pharmacology.
In 1976, a new charter restored UCL's legal independence, although still without the energy to award its own degrees. Under this charter the college became formally required as University College London. This name abandoned the comma used in its earlier name of "University College, London".
In 1986, UCL merged with the Institute of Archaeology. In 1988, UCL merged with the Institute of Laryngology & Otology, the Institute of Orthopaedics, the Institute of Urology & Nephrology and Middlesex Hospital Medical School.
In 1993, a reorganisation of the University of London meant that UCL and other colleges gained direct access to government funding and the modification to confer University of London degrees themselves. This led to UCL being regarded as a de facto university in its own right.
In 1994, the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust was established. UCL merged with the College of Speech Sciences and the Institute of Ophthalmology in 1995, the Institute of Child Health and the School of Podiatry in 1996 and the Institute of Neurology in 1997. In 1998, UCL merged with the Royal Free Hospital Medical School to create the Royal Free and University College Medical School renamed the UCL Medical School in October 2008. In 1999, UCL merged with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the Eastman Dental Institute.
The UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, the first university department in the world devoted specifically to reducing crime, was founded in 2001.
Proposals for a merger between UCL and Imperial College London were announced in 2002. The proposal provoked strong opposition from UCL teaching staff and students and the AUT union, which criticised "the indecent haste and lack of consultation", leading to its abandonment by UCL provost Sir Derek Roberts. The blogs that helped to stop the merger are preserved, though some of the links are now broken: see David Colquhoun's blog and the Save UCL blog, which was run by David Conway, a postgraduate student in the department of Hebrew and Jewish studies.
The King's College London in 2018.
Since 2003, when UCL professor David Latchman became master of the neighbouring Birkbeck, he has forged closer relations between these two University of London colleges, and personally maintained departments at both. Joint research centres add the UCL/Birkbeck Institute for Earth and Planetary Sciences, the UCL/Birkbeck/IoE Centre for Educational Neuroscience, the UCL/Birkbeck Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Birkbeck-UCL Centre for Neuroimaging.
In 2005, UCL was finally granted its own taught and research degree awarding powers and all UCL students registered from 2007/08 qualified with UCL degrees. Also in 2005, UCL adopted a new corporate branding under which the name University College London was replaced by the initialism UCL in all external communications. In the same year, a major new £422 million building was opened for University College Hospital on Euston Road, the UCL Ear Institute was established and a new building for the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies was opened.
In 2007, the UCL Cancer Institute was opened in the newly constructed Paul O'Gorman Building. In August 2008, UCL formed UCL Partners, an academic health science centre, with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. In 2008, UCL established the UCL School of power to direct or determine & Resources in Adelaide, Australia, the first campus of a British university in the country. The school was based in the historic Torrens Building in Victoria Square and its creation followed negotiations between UCL Vice Provost Michael Worton and South Australian Premier Mike Rann.
In 2009, the Yale UCL Collaborative was established between UCL, UCL Partners, Yale University, Yale School of Medicine and Yale – New Haven Hospital. It is the largest collaboration in the history of either university, and its scope has subsequently been extended to the humanities and social sciences.
In June 2011, the mining organization BHP Billiton agreed to donate AU$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, as well as 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 render up to 125,000m2 of space on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. UCL East will be part of 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 alive space for students.
The 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 organization Intel announced the establishment of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, a London-based institute for research into the future of cities.
In 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 coding of the London schools system. In February 2014, the two institutions announced their purpose to merge, and the merger was completed in December 2014.
In September 2013, a new Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy STEaPP was established within the Faculty of Engineering, one of several initiatives within the university to increase and reflect upon the links between research and public sector decision-making.
In October 2013, it was announced that the Translation Studies Unit of Imperial College London would go forward 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 would collaborate to establish the UCL Big Data Institute. In January 2015, it was announced that UCL had been selected by the UK government as one of the five founding members of the Alan Turing Institute together with the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Warwick, an institute to be established at the British the treasure of knowledge to promote the development and usage of advanced mathematics, data processor science, algorithms and big data.
In August 2015, the Department of administration Science and Innovation was renamed as the School of Management and plans were announced to greatly expand UCL's activities in the area of business-related teaching and research. The school moved from the Bloomsbury campus to One Canada Square in Canary Wharf in 2016.
UCL established the Institute of Advanced Studies IAS in 2015 to promote interdisciplinary research in humanities and social sciences. The annual Orwell Prize for political writing moved to the IAS in 2016.
In June 2016, it was reported in Times Higher Education that as a result of administrative errors hundreds of students who studied at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute between 2005 and 2006 and 2013–1 had been assumption the wrong marks, leading to an unknown number of students being attributed with the wrong assigns and, in some cases, being failed when they should have passed their degrees. A relation by UCL's Academic Committee Review Panel subjected that, according to the institute's own review findings, senior members of UCL staff had been aware of issues affecting students' results but had not taken action to acknowledgment them. The Review Panel concluded that there had been an obvious lack of use of these things amongst the institute's senior staff.