University College London (UCL) is a public research university in London, England, and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1826 as London University, UCL was the first university institution established in London and the first in England to be entirely secular, to admit students regardless of their religion, and to admit women on equal terms with men. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham is commonly regarded as the spiritual father of UCL, as his radical ideas on education and society were the inspiration to its founders, although his direct involvement in its foundation was limited. UCL became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London in 1836. It has grown through mergers, including with the Institute of Neurology (in 1997), the Royal Free Hospital Medical School (in 1998), the Eastman Dental Institute (in 1999), the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (in 1999) and the School of Pharmacy (in 2012). UCL's main campus is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London, with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals located elsewhere in central London, and satellite campuses in Adelaide, Australia and Doha, Qatar. UCL is organised into 10 constituent faculties, within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres. UCL has around 26,700 students and 11,025 staff and had a total income of £937 million in 2012/13, of which £335 million was from research grants and contracts. UCL has around 4,000 academic and research staff and 650 full professors, the highest number of any British university. UCL is responsible for several museums and collections in a wide range of fields across the arts and sciences, including the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, a leading collection of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology.
