Qualla: University College London

University College London: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LordHarris at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jeremy Bentham is in a wooden cabinet in the south cloisters of the main building. He has been there, more or less, since his death in 1832. The philosopher who pioneered utilitarianism left instructions in his will that his body should be preserved and dressed in his own clothes and displayed for the use of his friends and disciples. The skeleton wears his actual suit. The head on top is a wax replica - the original mummified head was deemed too unsettling and is now kept in the university's vaults, having been kidnapped at least once by King's College London students who held it for ransom. The cabinet was wheeled into a council meeting once. The minutes recorded Bentham as "present but not voting." This is the kind of place UCL is.

Image: LordHarris at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

University College London: The Godless College

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.Salmon, CC BY-SA 2.0. When UCL was founded on 11 February 1826, Oxford and Cambridge were closed to anyone who would not subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. This excluded Catholics, Jews, Nonconformists, Hindus, Muslims, and most of the British population by simple arithmetic...

Image: J.Salmon | CC BY-SA 2.0

University College London: Firsts

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gnesener1900, CC BY-SA 3.0. The original London University was a joint-stock company - £100 shares sold to proprietors - and had no charter, no degree-awarding power, and no recognition as a university. It took until 1836 for a royal charter to be granted, incorporating it as University College, London unde...

Image: Gnesener1900 | CC BY-SA 3.0

University College London: Discoveries

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bengt Nyman, CC BY 2.0. UCL academics discovered the noble gases. Sir William Ramsay, professor of chemistry at UCL, found argon (1894), helium (1895), neon, krypton, xenon (all 1898), and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904. UCL scientists isolated the first hormone (secretin, by William Bayliss a...

Image: Bengt Nyman | CC BY 2.0

University College London: The Internet, Almost First

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. In 1973, Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL became one of only two international nodes on the ARPANET - the experimental network that would become the internet. The other was in Norway. UCL's implementation of internetworking between the ARPANET and early British academic net...

Image: UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

University College London: Notable Alumni and the Present

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Octavosaurus, CC BY-SA 4.0. UCL's alumni include Mahatma Gandhi, who took English classes with Henry Morley in 1888-89; Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya; Itō Hirobumi, the first prime minister of Japan; Sir Anerood Jugnauth, the founder of independent Mauritius; and John Stuart Mill, who attended...

Image: Octavosaurus | CC BY-SA 4.0