Imperial College London

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The college was founded in 1907, upon the merger of the City and Guilds of London Institute, the Royal School of Mines and the Royal College of Science. It was given it's Royal Charter in July 1907.

In later years St. Mary's Hospital Medical school (1988), the National Heart and Lung institute (1995), Charing Cross and Westminister schools (1997) merged into the college's medical faculty.

In 2000 Imperial College merged with Wye College, which at that time had much lesser reputation then Imperial. A number of voices have opinioned that the merger may have been due to Imperial's wish to obtain the significant amount of land owned by Wye College rather then for academic reasons.

Periodically rumours surface about a possible merger with the London School of Economics, while these have some basis, there has been no significant progress toward a merger.

Imperial College as it's full name suggests is a specialist college and does not not teach traditional subjects in the arts or the humanities. Despite this, in the last few years it has boasted a larger income than any other UK Univeristy.

The college is a member of the Univeristy of London, and also of the Russell Group of universities.

Student Alumni

Rajiv Gandhi (Indian Prime minister)

Simon Singh (Popular science author)

Staff alumni

Geoffrey Wilkinson (Nobel laureate, Chemistry)

Dennis Gabor (Nobel laureate, Physics)

Derek Barton (Nobel laureate, Chemistry)

Baron Patrick Blackett (Nobel laureate, Physics)

Abdus Salam (Nobel laureate, Physics)

Sir George Paget Thomson (Nobel laureate, Physics)