University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 (as a University college), it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic universities. The university has produced nine Nobel Prize winners and offers more than 230 first degree courses across 103 subjects. It has an annual turnover of £340 million, including £123 million for research.

History


The University was established in 1881 as University College Liverpool, admitting its first students in 1882. In 1884, it became part of the federal Victoria University. In 1894 Oliver Lodge, a professor at the University, made the world's first public radio transmission and two years later took the first surgical X-ray in the United Kingdom. The Liverpool University Press was founded in 1899, making it the third oldest university press in England. Students in this period were awarded external degrees by the University of London.

Following a Royal Charter and Act of Parliament in 1903, it became an independent university with the right to confer its own degrees called the University of Liverpool. The next few years saw major developments at the university, including Sir Charles Sherrington's discovery of the synapse and Professor William Blair-Bell's work on chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer. In the 1930s to 1940s Professors Sir James Chadwick and Sir Joseph Rotblat made major contributions to the development of the atomic bomb. From 1943 – 1966 Allan Downie, Professor of Bacteriology, was involved in the eradication of smallpox.

In 1994 the university was a founding member of the Russell Group, a collaboration of twenty leading research-intensive universities, as well as a founding member of the N8 Group in 2004. In the 21st century physicists, engineers and technicians from the University of Liverpool were involved in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, working on two of the four detectors in the LHC.

The University has produced nine Nobel Prize winners, from the fields of science, medicine and peace. The Nobel laureates include the physician Sir Ronald Ross, physicist Professor Charles Barkla, the physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, physicist Sir James Chadwick, chemist Sir Robert Robinson, physiologist Professor Har Gobind Khorana, physiologist Professor Rodney Porter, physicist Professor Joseph Rotblat and ecological economist Dr Pushpam Kumar. Sir Ronald Ross was also the first British Nobel laureate in 1902.

The term "red brick" was first coined by Liverpool professor Edgar Allison Peers (writing as Bruce Truscot) to describe the red brick built civic universities that were built in the UK, mostly in the latter part of the 19th century; these were characterised by Victorian buildings of red brick, such as Victoria Building, which was historically the administrative heart of the University.

Present


Liverpool has the sixth largest financial endowment of any UK university, valued at £110m, according to the Sutton Trust. It is a member of the Russell Group of Universities and a founding member of the Northern Consortium. The University has over 23,000 registered students, with almost 18,000 full-time registered students. The University has a broad range of teaching and research in both arts and sciences, and has a large medical school, which is associated with the neighbouring Royal Liverpool University Hospital. In September 2008, Sir Howard Newby took up the post of Vice-Chancellor of the University, following the retirement of Sir Drummond Bone.

The University has a Students' union to represent students' interests, known as the Liverpool Guild of Students.

Whilst Liverpool has a total of five universities, the colloquial term Liverpool University commonly refers to the University of Liverpool rather than any of the other four: Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool John Moores University, Edge Hill University, or LIPA.

Campus and facilities
The University is mainly based around a single urban campus approximately five minutes walk from Liverpool City Centre, at the top of Brownlow Hill and Mount Pleasant. The main site is divided into three faculties: Health and Life Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; and Science and Engineering. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital (Leahurst) and Ness Botanical Gardens are based on the Wirral Peninsula. There was formerly a research station at Port Erin on the Isle of Man until it closed in 2006. The Johnston Laboratories, a pathology research facility of repute during much of the 20th century, is now the biochemistry department of the university.

Academic reputation
In the Times Good University Guide 2011, the University of Liverpool was ranked 28th.[29]

In the Complete University Guide 2008, published in The Independent, the University of Liverpool was ranked 42nd out of 113, based on nine measures, while The Times Good University Guide 2008 ranked Liverpool 34th out of 113 universities. The Sunday Times university guide recently ranked the University of Liverpool 27th out of 123. In 2010, "The Sunday Times has ranked University of Liverpool 29th of 122 institutions nationwide. In 2008 the THE-QS World University Rankings rated University of Liverpool 99th best in the world, and 137th best worldwide in 2009. In 2011 the QS World University Rankings ranked the university in 123rd place, up 14. Times Higher Education are publishing a separate ranking soon.

Green issues
In 2008 the University of Liverpool was voted joint seventeenth greenest university in Britain by WWF supported company Green League. This represents an improvement after finishing 55th in the league table the previous year.

The position of the university is determined by point allocation in departments such as Transport, Waste management, sustainable procurement and Emissions amongst other categories; these are then transpired into various awards. Liverpool was awarded the highest achievement possible in Environmental policy, Environmental staff, Environmental audit, Fair trade status, Ethical investment policy and Waste recycled whilst also scoring points in Carbon emissions, Water recycle and Energy source.

Liverpool was the first among UK universities to develop their desktop computer power management solution, which has been widely adopted by other institutions. The university has subsequently piloted other advanced software approaches further increasing savings. The university has also been at the forefront of using the Condor HTC computing platform in a power saving environment. This software, which makes use of unused computer time for computationally intensive tasks usually results in computers being left turned on. The university has demonstrated an effective solution for this problem using a mixture of Wake-on-LAN and commercial power management software.

Sport
The University of Liverpool has a proud sporting tradition and has many premier teams in a variety of sports. The current sporting project comes under the title of Club Liverpool. This athletic union offers nearly 50 types of sport ranging from football, rugby, cricket and hockey to others such as windsurfing, lacrosse and cheerleading. Many of the sports have both male and female teams and most are involved in competition on a national scale. BUCS is the body which organises national university competitions involving 154 institutions in 47 sports. Most sports involve travelling to various locations across the country, mainly on Wednesday afternoons.

Two other prominent competitions are the Christie Championships and the Varsity Cup. The Christie Cup is an inter-university competition between Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. The Varsity Cup is a popular "derby" event between Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool.

Notable alumni

 * Dr Barham Ahmad Salih, Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government
 * Sanjay Jha, Co-CEO Motorola,Inc. and CEO of Motorola's Mobile Devices business.
 * Clive Barker
 * Charles Barkla, Physicist and Nobel Laureate
 * Wade Barrett, professional wrestler
 * Stephen Bayley
 * Torben Betts, award-winning playwright
 * Roger Bolton, broadcaster and television producer
 * Paula Byrne
 * Steve Coppell, footballer and manager
 * Barry Horne (footballer), journalist and pundit
 * Frances Crook
 * Victoria Derbyshire
 * Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate
 * Steve Firth, musician
 * Maxwell Fry, modernist architect
 * Rob Grant
 * Nick Grimshaw
 * Brian Hall
 * John Holt, physicist
 * Beverley Hughes MP PC
 * Dr Robert Roland Hughes, pioneer in Neuroscience and Electroencephalography
 * Frank Irving, aeronautical engineer, glider pilot and author
 * Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, First President and Prime Minister of The Gambia
 * Rory Jennings, actor
 * Syed Kamall
 * Brian Keaney, children's author
 * Sir Frank Kermode, literary critic
 * Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, historian
 * Peter Kilfoyle
 * Robert Legget
 * Sir Leigh Lewis, permanent secretary
 * Oliver W F Lodge
 * Chris Lowe
 * Diarmaid MacCulloch, historian
 * Rex Makin, solicitor and philanthropist
 * Helen Marnie, member of the band Ladytron
 * Anna Maxwell Martin
 * Declan McManus (Honorus Causa)
 * Tony McNulty (Labour Minister)
 * Brian Millard, leader of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council from 2005 to 2007
 * Margaret Murphy, crime writer and winner of First Blood Award
 * Doug Naylor
 * Sir John Neale, historian of Tudor England
 * Ernest Newman, music critic and biographer of Wagner
 * Lord Nicholls, retired Law Lord
 * Gordon Oakes
 * Stel Pavlou
 * David Andrew Phoenix OBE, Biochemist
 * Dee Plume and Sue Denim, musicians from the band Robots in Disguise
 * Phil Redmond, television producer
 * Wolfgang Rindler, physicist
 * Dame Stella Rimington, Director-General of MI5
 * Winifred Robinson, broadcaster
 * Patricia Routledge, actress
 * Amha Selassie of Ethiopia
 * Sir Robin Saxby
 * Scott Seaman-Digby, Conservative Councillor and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
 * Maeve Sherlock OBE
 * Margaret Simey, social and political campaigner
 * F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead
 * Martin Smith, vehicle designer
 * Jon Snow, Channel 4 television news presenter
 * Olaf Stapledon, novelist and philosopher
 * James Stirling, architect
 * Lytton Strachey, biographer and essayist
 * Sir Michael Thompson, academic
 * Steve Voake, children's author
 * Tung Chee Hwa, first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China
 * Baroness Walmsley, politician
 * "Professor" Sid Watkins, former Formula 1 chief medical officer
 * Sir David Weatherall, Regius Professor of Medicine (Oxford), 1992–2000
 * Laurence Westgaph, social historian and activist
 * Jim Woodcock, Professor of software engineering
 * Hossein Bashiriyeh, Iranian professor of Political science
 * Verna Wright, evangelist, physician and research scientist

Nobel Prize winners
There have been nine Nobel Prize Laureates who have been based at the University during a significant point in their career.


 * Sir Ronald Ross (awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908) for his work with malaria.
 * Professor Charles Barkla (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917) for discovering the electromagnetic properties of X-rays.
 * Sir Charles Sherrington (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1932) for his research into neurons.
 * Sir James Chadwick (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935) for discovering neutrons.
 * Sir Robert Robinson (awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1947) for his research into anthocyanins and alkaloids.
 * Professor Har Gobind Khorana (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1968) for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
 * Professor Rodney Porter (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1972) for his discovery of the structure of antibodies.
 * Professor Joseph Rotblat (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995) for his efforts with nuclear disarmament.