Birkbeck, University of London

Birkbeck College, University of London (which operates under the trading name of Birkbeck, University of London) is a public research university located in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. Established in 1823 as the London Mechanics' Institute by its founder Joseph Clinton Robertson and its supporters George Birkbeck, Jeremy Bentham, J. C. Hobhouse and Henry Brougham, Birkbeck is one of the few universities to specialise in evening higher education in the United Kingdom.

Birkbeck's main building is in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden in Central London. Birkbeck offers more than 200 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Birkbeck's academic activities are organised into five constituent faculties, which are subdivided into nineteen departments. The university is a member of academic organisations such as the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the European University Association. The university is also a member of the Screen Studies Group, London. The university's Centre for Brain Function and Development was awarded The Queen's Anniversary Prize for its brain research in 2005.

Birkbeck's alumni and former and current staff include five Nobel laureates, numerous political leaders, members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and a British prime minister.

In the 11 October 1823 issue of Mechanic's Magazine, a new weekly serial by JC Robertson and Thomas Hodgskin, the editors with influence from Francis Place proposed a London Mechanics' Institute. Their proposal referenced the work of Dr. George Birkbeck, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and pioneer of adult education. Birkbeck soon became central to the project and, on 11 November 1823, chaired its founding meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand before a crowd of two thousand people. The Institute was not universally popular, with some accusing Birkbeck of "scattering the seeds of evil", yet Birkbeck fully devoted his efforts to the college as its founder and first president.

The Institute moved into the Southampton Buildings on Chancery Lane in 1825. In 1830, it became one of the earliest colleges to admit female students. Changes to the University of London's structure in 1858 allowed the Institute's students to sit examinations for its degrees. The Institute became the main provider for part-time university education.

In 1866 the Institute changed its name to the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution. In 1885 Birkbeck moved to the Breams Building on Fetter Lane, where it remained for the next 67 years.

In 1907 Birkbeck's name was shortened to Birkbeck College. In 1913 a review of the University of London, which had been restructured in 1900, recommended that Birkbeck become a constituent college of the University, but the outbreak of the First World War delayed this until 1920. The Royal Charter was granted in 1926.

In 1921 the college's first female professor, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, began teaching botany. Other distinguished faculty in the years between the two world wars included Nikolaus Pevsner, J. D. Bernal and Cyril Joad.^{[citation needed]}