Imperial College London
Imperial College London (Imperial) is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a cultural area that included the Royal Albert Hall, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and several royal colleges.[6][7] Established by royal charter in 1907, Imperial College London unified into one institution the Royal College of Science, the Royal School of Mines and the City and Guilds of London Institute.[8] In 1988, the Imperial College School of Medicine was formed by merging with St Mary's Hospital Medical School. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Imperial College Business School.
Imperial College London focuses on science, engineering, medicine and business, with an entrepreneurial culture.[9][10][11] The main campus is in South Kensington where most teaching and research takes place. A second campus in White City serves as a platform for innovation.[12] The college also operates teaching hospitals across London, forming an academic health science centre. The college was previously a member of the University of London and became an independent university in 2007.[13] Imperial has an international community, with around 60% international students and over 140 countries represented on campus.[14][15]
National rankings
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Academic profile[edit]
Reputation[edit]
Imperial has a reputation as one of the leading institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe, which focuses on four practical subjects: science, engineering, medicine, and business.[70] According to the University President what makes Imperial unique is its integration of science and business.[9][10][11] Beginning in 1907, Prince Albert's vision was to use the proceeds from the Great Exhibition (a world fair) to develop South Kensington into a hub for science, culture, and industry.[71] [72] From its industrial origins, the university has grown into a culture around impact, innovation, and entrepreneurship.[9][10][11]
Imperial is also known for its graduates' high-level careers.[73][74][75][76] The university has a reputation for having a high workload and fast pace, which some have considered challenging.[77][78][79][80] With 60% of its students from outside the United Kingdom and a highly international faculty, the school is known for fostering a more global mindset. [81][82][83] Imperial also has a reputation as forward-thinking, preparing students to address future challenges.[84][85][86][87][88][89] Therefore, Imperial's reputation is built on its academic and research standards, its graduates careers, and a culture of impact, innovation, and entreprenuership.
Controversies[edit]
Accusations of bullying[edit]
In 2003, it was reported that one third of female academics "believe that discrimination or bullying by managers has held back their careers".[135] Imperial has since won the Athena SWAN Award, which recognises employment practices that are supportive of the careers of women in science, technology, engineering and maths.
In 2007, concerns were raised about the methods that were being used to fire people in the Faculty of Medicine.[136][137] In 2014, Stefan Grimm, of the Department of Medicine, was found dead after being threatened with dismissal for failure to raise enough grant money.[138] His last email before his death accused his employers of bullying by demanding that he should get grants worth at least £200,000 per year.[139][140] The college announced an internal inquiry into Stefan Grimm's death, and found that the performance metrics for his position were unreasonable, with new metrics for performance being needed.[141]
The issue of bullying within the staff at Imperial resurfaced in November 2020 when Alex Sobel, the Labour MP for Leeds North West asked the Secretary of State for Education in a written question on 24 November what steps the Office for Students had taken in response to a report by Jane McNeill QC dated 25 August which found that bullying had taken place at Imperial under the President (Alice Gast) and the Chief Financial Officer. Michelle Donelan, the Conservative MP for Chippenham, responded for the Department for Education that "The Office for Students (OfS) is considering the information it has received in relation to this matter, in line with their normal processes. As is standard practice, the OfS cannot comment on individual cases".[142] The college was accused of a cover-up by the Universities and Colleges Union in December 2020 when it refused to publish McNeill's report, even in redacted form. The Chair of Council said that the report was kept confidential to preserve the anonymity of people who gave evidence, that its recommendations had been accepted by the senior leadership team, and that these recommendations were being implemented in full. A disciplinary panel decided that Gast's dismissal as president was not warranted and spokesperson for the college said that she had "offered wholehearted apologies to those affected".[143]
On 14 February 2021, it was announced that the OfS would formally investigate allegations of bullying.[144]
Student life[edit]
Student body[edit]
For the 2019/20 academic year, Imperial had a total full-time student body of 19,400, consisting of 10,475 undergraduate students and 8,925 postgraduates.[145] 50.7% of the student body is from outside of the UK.[146] 32% of all full-time students came from outside the European Union in 2013–14,[147] and around 13% of the International students had Chinese nationality in 2007–08.[148]
Imperial's male to female ratio for undergraduate students is uneven at approximately 64:36 overall[148] and 5:1 or higher in some engineering courses. However, medicine has an approximate 1:1 ratio with biology degrees tending to be higher.[149]
![Rajiv Gandhi, 6th Prime Minister of India[c]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Rajiv_Gandhi_%281987%29.jpg/90px-Rajiv_Gandhi_%281987%29.jpg)
Nobel laureates: (medicine) Sir Alexander Fleming, Sir Ernst Boris Chain, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley, Rodney Robert Porter, (physics) Abdus Salam, Sir George Paget Thomson, Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett, Dennis Gabor, Peter Higgs, (chemistry) Sir Norman Haworth, Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Sir Derek Barton, Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson, Sir George Porter.[169]
Fields medalists: Klaus Friedrich Roth, Sir Simon Donaldson, Martin Hairer.[170]
Academic affiliations include: Sir Tom Kibble, co-discoverer of Higgs Boson;[171] Sir Tejinder Virdee, experimental particle physicist;[172] Narinder Singh Kapany, inventor of fibre optics;[173][174][175][176] Sir John Pendry, theoretical solid state physicist;[177] Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold, physical organic chemistry pioneer;[178] Sir William Henry Perkin, discoverer of the first synthetic organic chemical dye mauveine;[179] Sir Edward Frankland, originator of the theory of chemical valency;[180] Sir William Crookes, discoverer of thallium;[181] Sir Alan Fersht, chemist;[182] David Phillips, chemist;[183] Harold Hopkins, contributed to the theory and design of optical instruments;[184] Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher;[185] Sir Steven Cowley, physicist and president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford;[186] and Sir John Ambrose Fleming, inventor of the vacuum tube.[187]
In biology and medicine; Thomas Huxley, advocate of the theory of evolution; Azeem Majeed. Clinical Academic and Public Health Specialist; Wendy Barclay, virologist; Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England;[188] David Livingstone, medical missionary and Clare Lloyd, biologist.
In engineering; Sir Alec Skempton, one of the founding fathers of soil mechanics; George E. Davis, regarded as the founding father of chemical engineering; Olgierd Zienkiewicz, a pioneer of the Finite Element Method; Dame Julia Higgins, polymer scientist;[189] Dame Judith Hackitt, former Chair of the Health and Safety Executive;[190] Dudley Maurice Newitt, scientific director of the Special Operations Executive;[191] and Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, engineer and Member of the House of Lords.[192]
Non-academic affiliations include: H. G. Wells, author;[193] Nikolas Tombazis, chief car designer at McLaren and Ferrari; Ralph Robins, CEO of Rolls-Royce;[194] Brian May, guitarist of rock band Queen;[195] Chew Choon Seng, CEO of Singapore Airlines; Sir Julius Vogel, former Prime Minister of New Zealand;[196] Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India;[197] Teo Chee Hean, Senior Minister of Singapore (formerly Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore); Edem Tengue, Minister of maritime economy of the republic of Togo; Huw Thomas, Physician to the Queen;[198] Sir Roger Bannister, ran the first four-minute mile;[199] David Warren, inventor of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder;[200] Andreas Mogensen, first Danish astronaut; Winston Wong, entrepreneur; Alan Howard, hedge fund manager and philanthropist; Cyrus Pallonji Mistry, former chairman of the Tata Group;[201] Michael Birch, entrepreneur; Henry Charles Stephens, politician; Sir Michael Uren, businessman and philanthropist; Ian Read, CEO of Pfizer, Pallab Ghosh, BBC correspondent, Hannah Devlin, science journalist; Chi Onwurah, politician;[202] Dyah Roro Esti Widya Putri, member of House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia; Nicola Fox, Head of Science at NASA;[203] Danny Lui, co-founder Lenovo;[204] Simon Singh, author；Chen Jining, Secretary of Shanghai.[205]
