1826 to 1836 – London University ) as imagined by
Thomas Hosmer Shepherd in 1827–28, when construction was in progress. The portico and dome were completed in 1829, but lack of funds meant it would be many years before reality matched the picture. 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 () 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. ' 1923 mural
The Four Founders of UCL Despite 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 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. However, Bentham is commonly regarded as the "spiritual father" of UCL, as his ideas on education and society were influential with the institution's founders, particularly
James Mill (1773–1836) and
Henry Brougham (1778–1868). In 1828, the chair of political economy at London University was created, with
John Ramsay McCulloch as the first incumbent. In 1829, the university appointed the first professor of English in England, although the course concentrated on linguistics and the modern teaching of English – studying English literature – was introduced by
King's College London in 1831. 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 Britain. Classes in medicine began at the opening of the college in 1828, and in 1834
University College Hospital (originally North London Hospital) opened as a teaching hospital for these classes, which were organised into a faculty of medicine in 1836.
1836 to 1900 – University College, London After almost a decade of attempting to win recognition as a university and the right to award degrees, including an Address to the Crown from the House of Commons, the proprietors of London University accepted the government's proposal to establish the University of London as an independent examining body, accepting the status of a college for their institution. As a result, the proprietors of London University were incorporated by
royal charter under the name
University College, London on 28 November 1836. On the same day, the
University of London was created by royal charter as a degree-awarding examining board for students from affiliated schools and colleges, with University College and
King's College, London being named in the charter as the first two affiliates. The first students from UCL and King's matriculated as undergraduates in 1838 and the first degrees were awarded to students of the two colleges in 1839. There had been an intention to establish a course in engineering at the college's opening but no professor was appointed until 1840 or 1841, after engineering courses had started at Durham University (1837) and King's College London (1838). The
Slade School of Fine 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 making it the first British university to be allowed 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 Engineering and of Medicine (with the exception of courses on public health and hygiene). UCL's admission of women in 1878 came almost three decades after
Bedford College became the first institution to offer university-level education for women in Britain, and the establishment of the University of London's General Examination for Women in 1868. The Ladies' Educational Association held classes for women from 1868, taught by professors from UCL but independently of the college. From 1871 to 1872 these were held inside the college building, although still independently of the college. From 1872, some professors, particularly
Edward Poynter of the Slade, started to admit women to their classes. The full opening on the faculties of arts, science and law in 1878 came two years after the admission of women alongside men at the
University of Bristol from its foundation (as
University College Bristol) in 1876. The first woman to officially enrol in architecture at UCL was
Gertrude Leverkus in 1915, although
Ethel and
Bessie Charles had been allowed to audit classes in the 1890s. 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. A new royal charter granted to the University of London in 1858 effectively removed the affiliation of colleges to the university. Dissatisfaction from the colleges and the desire for a "teaching university" in London led to royal commissions that reported in 1888 and 1892 and the reconstitution of the university under the University of London Act 1898. 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 title 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 in the UK, funded by the
Ramsay Memorial Fund, in 1923. In 1904,
Francis Galton donated £1,000 to the University of London for a
eugenics laboratory; this transferred to UCL in 1907 with
Karl Pearson as its director. UCL apologised for its "fundamental role in the development, propagation and legitimisation of eugenics" in 2021. In 1911, UCL received an anonymous donation of £30,000 () for a building for its
school of architecture. In 1919 the donor consented to being named as
Herbert Bartlett and the school was renamed in his honour. UCL sustained considerable bomb damage during the Second World War, including the complete destruction 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; it was not until 1954 that the main building was fully restored. The departments were dispersed across the country to
Aberystwyth,
Bangor, Gwynedd,
Cambridge,
Oxford,
Rothamsted near
Harpenden, Hertfordshire and
Sheffield, with the administration at Stanstead Bury near
Ware, Hertfordshire. The first UCL student newspaper,
Pi, was founded in 1946. The
Institute of Jewish Studies relocated from Manchester to UCL in 1959. The
Mullard Space Science Laboratory was established in 1967. In 1973,
Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL became one of only two international nodes on the
ARPANET, later becoming part of
SATNET. UCL's implementation of
internetworking between the ARPANET and early
British academic networks was the first international heterogeneous
resource sharing network. UCL played a significant role in the very
earliest experimental Internet work and adopted
TCP/IP in 1982, ahead of the ARPANET. 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.
1976 to 2005 – University College London In 1976, a new charter restored UCL's legal independence, although still without the power to award its own degrees. Under this charter the college became formally known as
University College London. This name abandoned the comma used in its earlier name of
University College, London. In 1993, a reorganisation of the University of London meant that UCL and other colleges gained direct access to government funding and the right to confer University of London degrees themselves. This led to UCL being regarded as a
de facto university in its own right. Mergers were a major feature of this period of UCL's history. In 1986, the college 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. Mergers continued in the 1990s, with the
Institute of Child Health joining in 1995, 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 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.
From 2005 building, which was opened in 2005 UCL was granted its own taught and research degree awarding powers in 2005, and all UCL students registered from 2007/08 qualified with UCL degrees. The same year, UCL adopted a new corporate branding under which the name University College London was replaced by the
initialism UCL in all external communications. UCL established the UCL School of Energy & Resources (later
UCL Australia) in
Adelaide, Australia, in 2008 as the first campus of a British university in the country. The school was based in the historic
Torrens Building in Victoria Square. In 2011, the mining company
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. UCL Australia closed in December 2017, with students and academic staff transferring to the
University of South Australia. Since 2018, UCL and the University of South Australia have offered joint master's degrees in data science and in energy systems with study in Adelaide and London. In 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 campus,
UCL East, next to the Olympic Park in Stratford in the East End of London. In 2018, UCL opened
UCL at Here East, at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, offering courses jointly between the
Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment and the
Faculty of Engineering Sciences. The first undergraduate students, on a new Engineering and Architectural Design
MEng, started in September 2018. One Pool Street, the first building on the UCL East campus, opened in November 2022. UCL East was officially opened, along with the Marshgate building that completed phase 1 of the development, in September 2023 by Olympic gold medalist and UCL alumna
Christine Ohuruogu. UCL continued to grow through mergers with smaller colleges in the University of London. On 1 January 2012 the
School of Pharmacy, University of London merged with UCL, becoming the UCL School of Pharmacy within the Faculty of Life Sciences. UCL and the
Institute of Education formed a strategic alliance in October 2012, followed by a full merger in December 2014. opened in 2019 UCL paid tens of thousands of pounds to settle ten sexual harassment claims against staff in the 2017/18 academic year, a rise from four cases the year before. Following pressure from victims, and after physicist
Emma Chapman won the legal right to speak freely about her abuse at the university, UCL announced in 2018 that it would abandon non-disclosure settlements in settlements. In 2020, UCL became the first
Russell Group university to ban romantic and sexual relationships between lecturers and their students. It was discovered in 2018 that an annual eugenics conference, the
London Conference on Intelligence, had been held at UCL, as an external paid event, between 2014 and 2017. An enquiry found that the organiser, an honorary lecturer, did not correctly follow the room booking procedure, including claiming that no controversial topics would be discussed, leaving the university unaware of the nature of the conference. Following the revelation, UCL announced in 2018 that it would launch an enquiry into the university's historical links with eugenics. This reported in 2020, but covered only historical eugenics and did not address the 2014–17 conferences, leading to a majority of the authors refusing to sign the final report. The Galton Lecture Theatre, Pearson Lecture Theatre and Pearson Building were all renamed in 2020, UCL was criticised (along with Oxford, Imperial and other London universities) in 2021 for accepting money from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, established to hold the fortune left to
Max Mosley by his father, British fascist leader
Oswald Mosley. UCL received £500,000 to establish a forensic evidence interpretation laboratory. Following the passing of the University of London Act 2018, which allowed member institutions to become universities in their own right while remaining part of the University of London, UCL applied for university status in 2019. The application was approved by the
Office for Students in 2022 and a supplemental charter was sealed on 17 April 2023, granting UCL university status. ==Campus and locations==