University College London

On February 9, 1825 the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell wrote to The Times proposing an institution “worthy of our gigantic metropolis,” which led to talks with Henry Brougham MP and other reformers. In the same year Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, John Smith and Benjamin Shaw bought the site in Bloomsbury.⁠[1]

On February 11, 1826 a group of progressive reformers, some inspired by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and including Henry Brougham, founded the non-sectarian “London University.” It was funded through £100 shares, had no Royal Charter and was mocked by the press as the “Cockney College.”⁠[1][2]

The Duke of Sussex laid the foundation stone on April 30, 1827, and the first professors were appointed that year.⁠[1]

The first students arrived in 1828, making the university the first in England to admit students regardless of religion, including Jewish, Roman Catholic and Non-Conformist students; as a non-residential university it also opened higher education to a broader section of society. The Grant Museum of Zoology was founded the same year, and University College School in 1830.⁠[2][1]

From 1833 to 1836 Captain Alexander Maconochie, a retired naval officer, served as Britain’s first professor of Geography; he was also secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.⁠[2]

University College Hospital was founded in 1834 and took its name in 1837. In 1841 UCL established the country’s first chair of Civil Engineering, whose first professor was the railway engineer C. B. Vignoles. In 1846 the surgeon Robert Liston performed Europe’s first public operation under modern anaesthetic at University College Hospital.⁠[1][2]

On November 28, 1836 the institution received its Royal Charter and was reconstituted as “University College, London”; the University of London was created on the same day with the power to confer degrees on students of University College and King’s College LondonKing's College LondonKing’s College London is a research university in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1829, it is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

The UCL Slade School of Fine Art opened in 1871. In 1878 UCL became the first UK institution to formally admit women to higher education and award them degrees; women could study Science, Arts and Laws, and from 1917 Medicine. Eliza Orme became the first woman to earn a law degree in England, and Louisa Aldrich-Blake the first British woman to gain a Master’s in surgery.⁠[1]

The Petrie Museum was established in 1892; in 1893 UCL set up the first students’ union at an English university; and in 1896 it produced one of Britain’s first clinical X-ray images.⁠[1]

In 1904 Sir William Ramsay received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the noble gases helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon and placing them in the periodic table, becoming Britain’s and UCL’s first Nobel laureate. The same year Ambrose Fleming invented the thermionic valve.⁠[1][2]

In 1907 UCL was incorporated into the federal University of London. The same year the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics was founded with Karl Pearson; UCL notes in its timeline that eugenics is now discredited.⁠[1]

Bombing in September 1940 destroyed the Great Hall and the Carey Foster Physics Laboratory and gutted much of the library, killing the caretaker Robert Clive Collard and his son Robert Arthur Collard.⁠[1][2]

In 1949 the crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale became UCL’s first female professor; in 1945 she had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the first two women to receive the honour.⁠[1]

On July 25, 1973 Professor Peter Kirstein led the UK’s first connection to ARPANET, sending data packets to the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry; he later helped extend the network across Europe and in 1976 set up Queen Elizabeth II’s first email account.⁠[1]

A new Royal Charter in 1977 re-established UCL as a legally independent institution and formally gave it the name University College London.⁠[1]

The Institute of Archaeology became part of UCL in 1986; under Provost Sir Derek Roberts UCL merged with the Institute of Child Health in 1996; the Institute of Neurology merged with UCL in 1997; and in 1999 the Eastman Dental Institute and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies joined.⁠[2]

In 1994 UCL became one of the 17 founding members of the Russell Group, whose name comes from the Hotel Russell in London where the founding universities met.⁠[3][4]

In 2005 UCL gained the power to award degrees in its own name, having previously awarded University of London degrees; this was the final step in its independence from the University of London.⁠[1][2]

The School of Pharmacy merged with UCL in 2012; the Institute of Education merged with UCL in 2014, becoming its 11th faculty; and UCL Press launched in 2015.⁠[2][1]

The Francis Crick Institute launched in 2016 as one of Europe’s largest biomedical research centres, with 1,500 scientists and support staff; its partners include UCL, the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, Imperial College LondonImperial College LondonImperial College London is a university in London, England, United Kingdom. Formed under a royal charter in 1907, it focuses on science, technology and medicine and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry and King’s College London.⁠[1]

Michael Spence joined UCL as President & Provost in January 2021. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 2008 to 2020, holds a BA with first-class honours in English, Italian and Law from the University of Sydney, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry.⁠[5]

UCL East, at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, opened in 2022; UCL describes it as its largest single expansion in nearly 200 years, with shared laboratories and studios focusing on areas such as robotics, AI and global health. Its first building, One Pool Street, opened in 2022 along the river from the London Aquatics Centre, and the larger Marshgate followed opposite in 2023, beside the London Stadium and the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture.⁠[2][1]

In 2024 UCL was named University of the Year by The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide.⁠[1]

On February 11, 2026 UCL began its bicentenary celebrations with staff, students, alumni and partners; the UCL200 programme aims to celebrate its founding values, highlight its excellence and set out a vision for its future.⁠[1]

UCL counts 30 Nobel laureates, with Sir Roger PenroseRoger PenroseRoger Penrose is a British mathematician and mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, known for his singularity theorem on gravitational collapse, twistor theory and Penrose tiling; in 2020 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that black hole formation is a robust prediction of general relativity.Open the full entry, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020, as its 30th.⁠[2]

The UCL timeline also lists Professor Geoffrey E. HintonGeoffrey HintonMachine learning researcher.Open the full entry of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for work enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks; Sir Demis HassabisDemis HassabisDemis Hassabis is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur, co-founder of DeepMind and its CEO and that of Google DeepMind from 2010 to 2026, and since then Chair of Google DeepMind, Chief Scientist of Alphabet and CEO of Isomorphic Labs; a former chess prodigy and game designer, he shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Jumper for AlphaFold’s protein structure prediction, and has appeared twice on the Lex Fridman Podcast.Open the full entry, a former student at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein structure prediction; and Professor Philippe Aghion of the Department of Economics, awarded the 2025 economics prize for his theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.⁠[1]

Recent Provosts have included Sir Derek Roberts, who took office in 1989 and retired in 1999; Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who served from 1999 to 2002; Malcolm Grant, UCL’s ninth Provost, from 2003 to 2013; and Michael Arthur, previously Vice-Chancellor of the University of LeedsUniversity of LeedsThe University of Leeds is a research university in Leeds, England. It was founded in 1904, when King Edward VII granted its Royal Charter, and its roots go back to the Leeds School of Medicine of 1831 and the Yorkshire College of Science of 1874. It is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry, who took office in 2013 as the first clinical academic to hold the post.⁠[2]

University College London: Official website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]