Queen Mary University of London
Queen Mary University of London is a public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of London. Queen Mary is a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities, the Association of Commonwealth Universities and Universities UK.
Today, Queen Mary has six campuses across East and Central London in Mile End, Whitechapel, Charterhouse Square, Ilford, Lincoln's Inn Fields and West Smithfield, as well as an international presence in China, France, Greece and Malta. The Mile End campus is the largest self-contained campus of any London-based university. Queen Mary is organised into three faculties – the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. In 2023/24 the university had around 26,000 students. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £729.6 million of which £160.9 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £693.4 million.
Queen Mary is a major centre for medical teaching and research and is part of UCLPartners, the world's largest academic health science centre. Queen Mary runs programmes at the University of London Institute in Paris, taking over the functions provided by Royal Holloway.
There are nine Nobel laureates among Queen Mary's alumni, and current and former staff. Notable alumni include Ronald Ross, who discovered the origin and cure for malaria; Davidson Nicol, who discovered the breakdown of insulin in the human body; British politician Peter Hain; and Andrew Pollard, the chief investigator of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
History
St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and The London Hospital Medical College
The Medical College of The Royal London Hospital was England's first medical school when it opened in 1785.In 1850, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first fully qualified female doctor in the UK, after training at St Bartholomew's Hospital.
People's Palace
The predecessor to Queen Mary College was founded in the mid-Victorian era as a People's Palace when growing awareness of conditions in London's East End led to drives to provide facilities for local inhabitants, popularised in the 1882 novel All Sorts of Conditions of Men – An Impossible Story by Walter Besant, which told of how a rich and clever couple from Mayfair went to the East End to build a ”Palace of Delight, with concert halls, reading rooms, picture galleries, art and designing schools." Although not directly responsible for the conception of the People's Palace, the novel did much to popularise it.The trustees of the Beaumont Trust, administering funds left by Barber Beaumont, purchased the site of the former Bancroft's School from the Drapers' Company. On 20 May 1885, the Drapers' Court of Assistants resolved to grant £20,000 "for the provision of the technical schools of the People's Palace." The foundation stone was laid on 28 June 1886, and on 14 May 1887 Queen Victoria opened the palace's Queen's Hall, as well as laying the foundation stone for the technical schools in the palace's east wing.
The technical schools were opened on 5 October 1888, with the entire palace completed by 1892. However, others saw the technical schools as one day becoming a technical university for the East End. In 1892, the Drapers' Company provided £7,000 a year for ten years to guarantee the educational side income.
East London College
In 1895 John Leigh Smeathman Hatton, director of evening classes, proposed introducing a course of study leading to the Bachelor of Science degree of the University of London. By the start of the 20th century, the first degrees were awarded and Hatton, along with several other professors, were recognised as teachers of the University of London. In 1906 an application for Parliamentary funds "for the aid of Educational Institutions engaged in work of a University nature", led to the college being admitted on an initial three-year trial basis as a school of the University of London on 15 May 1907 as East London College.Image:QMUL-Wind-Tunnel-1909.jpg|thumb|left|The ground-breaking wind tunnel built in the first-ever aeronautical department in the UK
Teaching of aeronautical engineering began in 1907, which led to the first UK aeronautical engineering department being established in 1909, boasting a ground-breaking wind tunnel and creating what became the oldest aeronautical programme in the world.
In 1910 the college's status in the University of London was extended for a further five years, with unlimited membership achieved in May 1915. During this period the organisation of the governors of the People's Palace was rearranged, creating the separate People's Palace Committee and East London College Committee, both under the Palace Governors, as a sign of the growing separation of the two concepts within a single complex.
During the First World War, the college admitted students from The London Hospital Medical College who were preparing for the preliminary medical examination, the first step in a long process that would eventually bring the two institutions together. After the war, the college grew, albeit constrained by the rest of the People's Palace to the west and a burial ground immediately to the east. In 1920 it obtained both the Palace's Rotunda and rooms under the winter gardens at the west of the palace, which became chemical laboratories. The college's status was also unique, being the only School of the University of London that was subject to both the Charity Commissioners and the Board of Education.
In April 1929 the College Council decided it would take the steps towards applying to the Privy Council for a Royal Charter, but on the advice of the Drapers' Company first devised a scheme for development and expansion, which recommended among other things to re-amalgamate the People's Palace and the college, with guaranteed provision of the Queen's Hall for recreational purposes, offering at least freedom of governance if not in space.
Queen Mary College
In the early hours of 25 February 1931 a fire destroyed the Queen's Hall, though both the college and the winter gardens escaped. In the coming days discussions on reconstruction led to the proposal that the entire site be transferred to the college which would then apply for a charter alone. The Drapers' Company obtained St Helen's Terrace, a row of six houses neighbouring the site, and in July 1931 it was agreed to give these over to the People's Palace for a new site adjacent to the old, which would now become entirely the domain of the college. Separation was now achieved. The Charter was now pursued, but the Academic Board asked for a name change, feeling that "East London" carried unfortunate associations that would hinder the college and its graduates. With the initial proposed name, "Queen's College", having already been taken by The Queen's College, Oxford and "Victoria College" felt to be unoriginal, "Queen Mary College" was settled on. The Charter of Incorporation was presented on 12 December 1934 by Queen Mary herself.Under the charter
During the Second World War, the college was evacuated to Cambridge, where it shared with King's College. After the war the college returned to London, facing many of the same problems but with prospects for westward expansion. The East End had suffered considerable bomb damage and consequently several areas of land near to the college site now became vacant. New buildings for physics, engineering, biology and chemistry were built on the new sites, whilst the arts took over the space vacated in the original building, now renamed the Queens' Building.Limited accommodation resulted in the acquisition of further land in South Woodford, upon which tower blocks were established. The college also obtained the Co-operative Wholesale Society's clothing factory on the Mile End Road which was converted into a building for the Faculty of Laws, as well as the former headquarters of Spratt's Patent Ltd at 41–47 Bow Road, which was converted into a building for the Faculty of Economics founded by Maurice Peston, Baron Peston. Both faculties were physically separated from what was now a campus to the west.
From the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s the college proposed to link with the London Hospital Medical College and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College with a joint facility in Mile End. A further link with both The London and St. Bartholomew's was made in 1974 when an anonymous donor provided for the establishment of a further hall of residence in Woodford, to be divided equally between Queen Mary College students and the two medical colleges.
At the start of the 1980s changing demographics and finances led to a reorganisation of the University of London. At Queen Mary some subjects, such as Russian and Classics were discontinued, whilst the college became one of five in the university with a concentration of laboratory sciences, including the transfer of science departments from Westfield College, Chelsea College, Queen Elizabeth College and Bedford College.
1989 to 2010
In 1989 Queen Mary College merged with Westfield College to form Queen Mary & Westfield College. In the years that followed, operations became focused on the Queen Mary site, leading to the eventual sale of the Westfield site.In 1990, The London Hospital was renamed The Royal London Hospital, after marking its 250th year, and a re-organisation of medical education within the University of London resulted in most of the free-standing medical schools being merged with existing large colleges to form multi-faculty institutions. In 1995 The London Hospital Medical College and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College merged into Queen Mary & Westfield College to form an entity named Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
In 2000 the college changed its name for general public use to Queen Mary, University of London; in 2013, the college legally changed its name to Queen Mary University of London.
The VISTA telescope is a 4-metre class wide-field telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile that was conceived and developed by a consortium of UK universities led by Queen Mary University, costing approximately £36m.
The Westfield Student Village opened in 2004 on the Mile End Campus, bringing over 2,000 rooms to students and a huge array of facilities, restaurants, and cafes.
The Blizard Building, home to the Medical School's Institute of Cell and Molecular Science opened at the Whitechapel campus in 2005. The award-winning building was designed by Will Alsop, and is named after William Blizard, an English surgeon and founder of The London Hospital Medical College in 1785.
The year 2006 saw the refurbishment of The Octagon, the original library of the People's Palace dating back to 1888.
In 2007 parts of the School of Law – postgraduate facilities and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies – moved to premises in Lincoln's Inn Fields in central London. The Women at Queen Mary Exhibition was staged in the Octagon, marking 125 years of Westfield College and 120 years of Queen Mary College.
In September 2009, the world's first science education centre located within a working research laboratory opened at the Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, hoping to inspire children with school tours and interactive games and puzzles.