University of Manchester

University of Manchester
Cognitio, sapientia, humanitas
Manchester, Lancashire
The Sackville Building, University of Manchester
Founded:	1824
Chancellor:	Nazir Afzal
Endowment:	£223.5 million (2022)
Website:	www.manchester.ac.uk
Location
Location:	53°28’0"N, 2°13’60"W

The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, Lancashire. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.

The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology had its origins in the Mechanics' Institute, which was founded in 1824. The present University of Manchester considers this date, which is also the date of foundation of the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, one of the predecessor institutions of the Victoria University of Manchester, as its official foundation year, as indicated in its crest and logo. The founders of the institute believed that all professions somewhat relied on scientific principles. As such, the institute taught working individuals branches of science applicable to their existing occupations. They believed that the practical application of science would encourage innovation and advancements within those trades and professions. The Victoria University of Manchester was founded in 1851, as Owens College. Academic research undertaken by the university was published via the Manchester University Press from 1904.

Manchester is the third-largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment and receives over 92,000 undergraduate applications each year, making it the most popular university in the United Kingdom by volume of applications. The University of Manchester is a member of the Russell Group and the American-based Universities Research Association. The University of Manchester, inclusive of its predecessor institutions, has had 25 Nobel laureates amongst its past and present students and staff, the fourth-highest number of any single university in the United Kingdom. In 2021/22, the university had a consolidated income of £1.2 billion, of which £270.6 million was from research grants and contracts (6th place nationally behind Oxford, University College London (UCL), Cambridge, Imperial and Edinburgh). The university has the seventh-largest endowment of any university in the UK.

History

Origins (1824 to 2004)

The Old Quadrangle at the University of Manchester's main campus on Oxford Road.

The University of Manchester traces its roots to the formation of the Mechanics' Institute (later the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) in 1824, and its heritage is linked to Manchester's pride in being the world's first industrial city. The chemist John Dalton, together with Manchester businessmen and industrialists, established the Mechanics' Institute to ensure that workers could learn the basic principles of science.

John Owens, a textile merchant, left a bequest of £96,942 in 1846 to found a college to educate men on non-sectarian lines. His trustees established Owens College in 1851 in a house on the corner of Quay Street and Byrom Street which had been the home of the philanthropist Richard Cobden, and subsequently housed Manchester County Court. The locomotive designer Charles Beyer became a governor of the college and was the largest single donor to the college extension fund, which raised the money to move to a new site and construct the main building now known as the John Owens building. He also campaigned and helped fund the engineering chair, the first applied science department outside the ancient universities. He left the college the equivalent of £10 million in his will in 1876, at a time when it was in great financial difficulty. Beyer funded the total cost of construction of the Beyer Building to house the biology and geology departments. His will also funded Engineering chairs and the Beyer Professorship of Applied Mathematics.

The Owens College Extension Movement formed their plans after a tour of mainly German universities and polytechnics. A Manchester mill owner, Thomas Ashton, chairman of the extension movement, had studied at Heidelberg University. Sir Henry Roscoe also studied at Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen and they collaborated for many years on research projects. Roscoe promoted the German style of research-led teaching that became the role model for the red-brick universities. Charles Beyer studied at Dresden Academy Polytechnic. There were many Germans on the staff, including Carl Schorlemmer, Britain's first chair in organic chemistry, and Arthur Schuster, professor of physics. There was even a German chapel on the campus.

In 1873, Owens College moved to new premises on Oxford Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, and from 1880 it was a constituent college of the federal Victoria University. This university was established and granted a royal charter in 1880, becoming the first civic university; following Liverpool and Leeds and becoming independent, it was renamed the Victoria University of Manchester in 1903 and absorbed Owens College the following year.

By 1905, the two institutions were large and active forces. The Municipal College of Technology, forerunner of UMIST, was the Victoria University of Manchester's Faculty of Technology while continuing in parallel as a technical college offering advanced courses of study. Although UMIST achieved independent university status in 1955, the universities continued to work together. However, in the late-20th century, formal connections between the university and UMIST diminished and in 1994 most of the remaining institutional ties were severed as new legislation allowed UMIST to become an autonomous university with powers to award its own degrees. A decade later the development was reversed. The Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology agreed to merge into a single institution in March 2003.

Before the merger, Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST counted 23 Nobel Prize winners amongst their former staff and students, with two further Nobel laureates being subsequently added. Manchester has traditionally been strong in the sciences; it is where the nuclear nature of the atom was discovered by Ernest Rutherford, and the world's first electronic stored-programme computer was built at the university. Notable scientists associated with the university include physicists Ernest Rutherford, Osborne Reynolds, Niels Bohr, James Chadwick, Arthur Schuster, Hans Geiger, Ernest Marsden and Balfour Stewart. Contributions in other fields such as mathematics were made by Paul Erdős, Horace Lamb and Alan Turing and in philosophy by Samuel Alexander, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alasdair MacIntyre. The author Anthony Burgess, architect Norman Foster and composer Peter Maxwell Davies all attended, or worked at, Manchester.

The merger

The current University of Manchester was officially launched on 1 October 2004 when Queen Elizabeth II bestowed its royal charter. The university was named the Sunday Times University of the Year in 2006 after winning the inaugural Times Higher Education Supplement University of the Year prize in 2005.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about University of Manchester)

• University of Manchester

References

• Powicke, Maurice: "University of Manchester." History Today (May 1951) 1#5 pp 48–55 online