University of Manchester

The University of Manchester in Manchester, England is the name of the university that will arise from the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester (commonly known as the University of Manchester before the merger) and UMIST on 1 October 2004.

General Information

The combined university can trace it origins back to 1824 when Manchester Mechanics' Institute (which later became UMIST) was founded, with the Victoria University being founded as Owen's College in 1851. The new university will be the largest single site university in the UK, and will have more academic subjects and departments than any other British University. The President and Vice-Chancellor of the new University will be Alan Gilbert, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

The combined university counts 23 Nobel Prize winners amongst its former students. It has traditionally been particularly strong in the sciences, with the nuclear nature of the atom being discovered at Manchester, and the world's first programmable electronic computer coming into being here. Famous scientists associated with the university include Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford and Alan Turing. However, the university has also contributed in many other fields, and the mathematician Paul Erdös, the author Anthony Burgess, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the architect Norman Foster all attended Manchester.

Campus and Facilities

The University comprises two adjacent campuses, the North Campus, which was formerly the UMIST campus, and the South Campus, formerly the campus of the Victoria University of Manchester. In addition there are a number of further university buildings located throughout the city, and throughout the further region (such as Jodrell Bank Observatory and Tabley House, a stately home, both of which are in the nearby county of Cheshire).

John Rylands Library

The University's library, John Rylands University Library of Manchester is the largest non-legal deposit library in the UK, and the country's third largest academic library after those of Oxford and Cambridge. Of particular note is the John Rylands Library itself, founded in memory of John Rylands by his wife Enriqueta Rylands. The library is situated in a very fine Victorian Gothic building and houses an important collection of historic books and manuscripts, including the oldest extant New Testament document, the so-called St. John's fragment.

Jodrell Bank

Jodrell Bank is the University's observatory, situated near Macclesfield. It has played an important role in the research of quasars and pulsars. In 1979, scientists at Jodrell Bank announced the first detection of a gravitational lens, which confirmed one of Einstein's theories.

See also

• Manchester Museum