Our history
University College London has been advancing medical education since 1834. Discover more about the history of our faculty and our major achievements.
We blend research and teaching in medicine with advances in clinical care and population health through partnership with four world-class London hospitals and the wider health community.
Our Medical School has emerged from the amalgamation of several prestigious institutions over the years: the medical schools of the Middlesex Hospital, University College Hospital, and the Royal Free Hospital.
In 2011, the Faculty of Medical Sciences was established alongside three others to represent one of the largest and most prestigious aggregations of academics in biomedical, life and population health sciences. We have a global reputation for teaching informed by cutting-edge research.
Key dates
1746
The Middlesex Hospital starts training doctors.
1826
UCL is founded under the name London University.
1830
Professor of Psychiatry at UCL John Conolly revolutionises the treatment of mentally ill patients, overturning the harsh practice of mechanically restraining patients.
1834
University College Hospital opens; the only one in London to be built to provide a university faculty with a hospital for teaching purposes.
1846
Robert Liston, Professor of Clinical Surgery at UCL, performs the first operation under anaesthetic in Europe. This is one of the most striking advances in the history of surgery.
1874
The Royal Free opens as the London School of Medicine for Women, the first medical school to admit women students.
1921
Former student Marie Stopes opens the first ever family planning clinic in London. It makes one of the greatest social impacts of the 20th century.
1922
UCL physiologist Archibald Vivian Hill wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his discovery relating to the production of heat in the muscle. Hill shared the prize with German scientist Otto Fritz Meyerhof.
1962
Former student Francis Crick (UCL Physics 1937) and James Watson identified the DNA double helix, and are awarded the Nobel Prize. Their work forms the basis of the human genome project.
1963
Andrew Huxley, then Head of UCL Physiology, wins a Nobel Prize alongside Sir John Eccles and Alan L Hodgkin for their discoveries concerning the electrical impulses that enable the activity of organisms to be coordinated by a central nervous system.
1964
Michael Epstein, Yvonne Barr and Bert Achong identified the EpsteinBarr virus - responsible for glandular fever - at the UCL Medical School, Middlesex Hospital.
1970
Bernard Katz, former Head of UCL Biophysics, is awarded a Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning how neurotransmitters are released at synapses - the junctions across which nerve cells signal to each other and to other types of cells.
1984
UCL's Professor Robin Weiss and colleagues discover that the CD4 molecule on lymphocytes is the binding receptor for HIV, crucial to early understanding of how HIV infects cells.
1987
University College Hospital Medical School merges with the Middlesex Hospital Medical School.
1988
Sir James Black, former Head of UCL Pharmacology, receives a Nobel Prize for work leading to the development of betablocker drugs propranolol and cimetidine, used to treat hypertension and stomach ulcers respectively.
1998
University College Hospital Medical School merges with the Royal Free Hospital Medical School.
2007
Sir Martin Evans, UCL Anatomy & Developmental Biology staff member 1966-1979, becomes a Nobel Laureate for discovering principles to introduce gene modifications in mice by using embryonic stem cells. Today, genetically modified mice are considered vital for medical research.
2009
UCL Partners is designated as one of the first academic health science partnerships in the UK. As well as UCL, the founding partners include Barts Health NHS Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Queen Mary University of London, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
2010
UCL becomes a founding partner of the Francis Crick Institute, a medical research consortium also involving the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, Imperial and King's College London.
2013
James Rothman shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells". Professor Rothman is establishing a laboratory at UCL under the Yale-UCL collaboration.
2014
Professor John O'Keefe, Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits & Behaviour at UCL, is awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain - an 'inner GPS' - that enables us to orient ourselves.
2015
Professor John Hardy (UCL Institute of Neurology) was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his pioneering research into the genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia and Parkinson's disease.
Highlights
The Medical Student
The Medical Student, from Punch or the London Charivari, 1842.
Son of the scalpel! from whatever class
You grind instruction just enough to pass -
St George's, Guy's, North London, or King's College, -
Thirsting alike for half-and-half and knowledge
Thou who must know so well, (all jibes apart,)
The true internal instruction of the heart -
This heart - which you "a hollow muscle" call,
I offer thee - aorta, valves and all.
Though to cheap hats and boots thy funds incline
And light rough Chesterfields at one pound nine;
Though on the virtues of all plants thou'rt dumb,
Save the Nicotiana Tabacum,
(Pentandria Digynia! - Lindley - mum!)
Though thou eschew'st the hospital's dull gloom,
Except to chat in the house-surgeon's room,
And practically practise, in addition,
The "Physiology of Deglutition."
Yet much I love thee, and devoutly sweat,
With lips that move controlled by "the fifth pair,"
That I will ne'er know peace until our hands
Shall form a 'ganglion' with Hymen's bands.
Then haste, my love, and let me call thee mine,
Precious and dear as sulphate of quinine,
Sparkling and bright as antiomonial wine,
Sharp as the angles of a new trephine,
My reckless, noisy, fearnought Valentine.
From University College London 1826-1926 by H. Hale Bellot.
