Great past - greater future: a collection of facts about the University
When University College Bristol, the precursor to the University, opened in 1876, it was the first higher education institution in England to admit women on an equal footing with men.
Bristol was the first university to select a woman as Registrar. Winifred Shapland was appointed in 1931.
Bristol was the first university to appoint a woman (excluding royalty) as Chancellor. Professor Dorothy Hodgkin took up the role in 1970.
Professor Alfred Marshall, who became the first Principal of University College Bristol in 1877, was the founder of economics as an academic discipline.
Conwy Lloyd Morgan, who became Professor of Psychology and Education at University College Bristol in 1901, was the founding father of experimental psychology.
Great George, the nine-and-a-half ton bell at the Wills Memorial Building, was cast in 1924 and remains one of the world’s finest and deepest-toned bells.
Arthur Roderick Collar, the University’s first Professor of Aeronautics, solved the problem of vibration in Barnes Wallis’s famous ‘bouncing bomb’.
Sir Alfred Pugsley, a professor of civil engineering at Bristol, overcame the problem of vibration in the wings of Hurricane fighters in the Second World War.
Sir William Ramsay, Principal and Professor of Chemistry at University College Bristol from 1880 to 1887, received the Nobel Prize 1904 for his work on the inert gaseous elements in air.
Bristol-born Professor Paul Dirac, who studied electrical engineering and then mathematics at the University, shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger.
Professor Cecil Frank Powell, who joined the University in 1927, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1950.
Professor Hans Albrecht Bethe, who held a fellowship at the University in 1934, won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1967.
Sir Nevill Francis Mott, a professor at the University between 1933 and 1954, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977.
The 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature went to honorary graduate, Harold Pinter, whose first play, The Room, had its first production at the University (1957).
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, who studied English at the University in 1958-59.
In 1946, Bristol established the first university Department of Drama in the country. It was the first such department to introduce the practical and theoretical study of film and television.
The University of Bristol Theatre Collection, founded in 1951, was the country’s first theatrical heritage museum.
Among the archives and rare books looked after by the University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, is the most complete collection relating to the great Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
In 1964, Sir Anthony Epstein, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University, discovered the first virus proved to cause cancer (the Epstein-Barr virus).
Bristol’s Centre for Deaf Studies opened in 1978 and was Europe’s first academic body to concentrate solely on research and education that aims to benefit the Deaf community."
England’s Chief Medical Officer and the UK’s Chief Medical Adviser, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the UK’s former Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Debby Reynolds, and the National Director for Health and Work, Professor Dame Carol Black, are all graduates of the University.
The University is the alma mater of many distinguished people from the world of sport, including Iain Percy, the double Olympic gold medallist in sailing; Kyran Bracken, a member of the victorious England Rugby World Cup squad of 2003; and Jayne Pearce, head of the media operation for the 2012 London Olympics.
Bristol students raise £100,000-plus for local charities every year, and contribute more than 90,000 hours of volunteering in the community.
The technique of ‘beating-heart’ surgery, which can avoid the need for artificial pumps during certain types of heart surgery and has significant benefits for patients, was pioneered at Bristol in 1995.
The Children of the ’90s study has followed the health and development of 14,000 children, making it one of the most comprehensive studies of pregnancy, infancy and childhood ever undertaken.
The Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamics Engineering (BLADE), which opened at the University in 2005, is the most advanced of its kind in Europe.
The teaching of medical sciences at Bristol was enhanced in 2005 by the arrival of Stan D Ardman (standard man), one of the world’s most sophisticated human patient simulators.
A survey in 2005 of 3,500 researchers worldwide by The Scientist magazine rated Bristol as the best research institution to work at in the UK.
Revolymer Ltd, a University of Bristol spin-out company dedicated to polymer research, has developed a non-stick chewing gum that could reduce annual street-cleaning costs by millions.
Bristol has 31 Fellows of the Royal Society and nine Fellows of the British Academy on its active and emeritus staff. That is impressive by any standards; in relation to the University’s modest size, it is remarkable.
In May 2008, the University launched BlueCrystal, its £7 million supercomputer facility that can carry out 37 trillion calculations per second and supports high-level research across a range of disciplines.
David May, Professor of Computer Science at the University and Chief Technology Officer at spin-out company XMOS Semiconductor, was named by EE Times in 2008 as one of 35 people, places and things that will have the greatest influence on how this century develops.
Bristol gets an average of about 11 home/EU applications for every undergraduate place, making it more popular than almost any other UK university.
The University is planning to invest some £350 million in buildings and facilities over the next few years to ensure that it remains at the forefront of learning, discovery and enterprise.