LONDRES

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DE LONDRES

University College London, also known as UCL, is one of the schools that form the University of London. It is the third oldest institution of higher education in England after Oxford and Cambridge and one of the founding colleges of the University of London. Founded in 1826 she was marked by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham and was born as a secular university, as opposed to the strictly religious tradition of Oxford and Cambridge.

It was the first university in England to admit students of any race, class and religion and also the first to accept women, although this is shared with the University of Bristol. He was also the first to create a student union and a pioneer in the establishment of the departments of chemical engineering, chemistry, Egyptology, electrical engineering, English, French, geography, German, Italian, phonetics, psychology and zoology.

Currently holds the secular character of its foundation and, unlike most universities in the UK, does not have chapel for Christians and prayer rooms for Muslims. It is the largest educational institution in London and one of the most selective and prestigious in the country.

It usually occurs in the top of the lists of the best universities worldwide and since the founding of the Nobel prize in 1901 UCL has always had at least one winner in each decade. A total of 29 Nobel laureates have been associated with the university, with names like the physicist Peter Higgs or chemist Otto Hahn. Through its classrooms they have also been important names in history as Mahatma Gandhi, Graham Bell or Ken Follet.

In 2002 he announced a plan to join the Imperial College of London, but the academic staff and students opposed the idea because it was understood as a de facto absorption by the Imperial College. A month later, thanks to an active campaign on the part of these groups, the project was abandoned and currently remains an independent college of the University of London.