University of Nottingham
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Motto: "Sapientia Urbs Conditur" (A City is Built on Wisdom) |
The University of Nottingham is a leading research-intensive University in the city of Nottingham, in the East Midlands of England. It gained its Royal Charter in 1948, with origins as an adult school from 1798. It is a member of the Russell Group of leading British universities, and of Universitas 21, an international network of research-led universities.
In 2004, it had more than 27,000 registered students, with more than 10 applicants per place. This included over 4,000 international students from more than 100 countries. Its current Chancellor and President is the distinguished Chinese physicist Professor Fujia Yang, and its Vice-Chancellor Sir Colin Campbell. The University's Visitor is HM the Queen.
Campuses
The University of Nottingham is famed for its campus, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful in the country. In fact, the University now has several campuses:
- The original University Park Campus, located to the west of Nottingham City Centre.
- The award winning Jubilee Campus, by Sir Michael Hopkins, opened by HM the Queen in 1999, a mile away from University Park.
- Sutton Bonington Campus, a former agricultural college that has been part of the University for some time, about 12 miles away.
- UNiM - the University of Nottingham in Malaysia currently situated in Kuala Lumpur, and shortly moving to a custom built campus near the city.
- The University is also in the process of setting up a further campus, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China in the city of Ningbo, in the Shanghai province of China.
University of Nottingham Halls of Residence.
Research
- Much of the pioneering work on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was done at Nottingham, work for which Nottingham Professor Sir Peter Mansfield FRS received a Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2003.
- Also in 2003, Professor Clive Granger, a former Nottingham student and academic, who was at the university for 22 years, won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
- Professor Frederick Kipping (1863-1949), Professor of Chemistry (1897-1936), made the discovery of silicone polymers at Nottingham, but completely failed to realise the commercial significance of what is now a multi-billion pound industry.
- Other innovations at the university include cochlear implants for deaf children and the brace for impact position used in aircraft.
- Professor Don Grierson OBE FRS led the team that produced the world's first genetically modified tomato at Nottingham, the first GM food approved for sale on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Nottingham had 26 departments rated 5 or 5* (internationally excellent) in the UK Funding Council's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise.
Other Facts
- Nottingham frequently has the highest number of applicants of any UK university.
- The University attracted controversy in 2001 when it accepted £3.8m from British American Tobacco for the creation of a centre of corporate responsibility. The donation caused Professor Richard Smith, Editor of the British Medical Journal to resign from his post as professor at the university, a 20 strong Cancer Research Team to move to London, and the Cancer Research Campaign to stop its £1.5m fundraising campaign for the renovation of the University's cancer research facilities.
- Nottingham campuses are noted for their greenery, their lakes, and their gardens. The new Malaysian campus is also being built as a 'garden campus', and is having a lake dug especially.
- In 1985 students at the university managed to fit 27 people into a Ford Sierra car.
- The University Radio Station, University Radio Nottingham (or URN) has won approximately a third of all the BBC Radio 1 awards for student radio. The radio station holds the world record for the longest continuous radio broadcast at 42 hours.
- Campus 14 is a bar crawl of fourteen bars on the University Park campus and is a well-known campus tradition. It was officially banned by the university in 2001 after complaints from the local health authority about the number of stomachs they were having to pump.
Medical School
The University has one of the largest medical schools in the United Kingdom, and runs courses at a number of teaching hospitals:
- The Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) is located just across the road from the University Park Campus.
- In September 2003 the doors opened for the first intake at a new medical school, University of Nottingham Medical School at Derby in the nearby city of Derby, offering a fast-track postgraduate medicine course.
- On top of these, a few years ago the University of Nottingham took on a number of nursing teaching sites, formerly the Mid Trent Nursing College. These are located across the East Midlands and include sites at Boston, Derby, Lincoln, Mansfield as well as Nottingham.
Notable Alumni
Academia
- Professor Bob Boucher CBE - Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
- Sir Bernard Crossland FRS - Former President of the Institute of Mechanical Enginners
- Professor Louis Essen FRS - physicist
- Professor Clive Granger - 2003 Nobel Laureate, Economics
- Sir Brian Heap FRS - Master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge and former Vice-President of the Royal Society
- Sir Keith O'Nions FRS - Oxford Professor, Director-General UK Research Councils
- Professor Ian Wilmut OBE FRS - cloned Dolly the sheep
Arts and Media
- Matthew Bannister - radio journalist, former head of BBC Production
- Professor Robert Brustein - Harvard English professor, founder of Yale repertory theatre and the American Repertory theatre
- Judith McHale - President and CEO, Discovery Communications
- Lord Clive Hollick - former owner of United News
- Bob Phillis - Chief Executive, Guardian Media Group
- Peter Rice, President Fox Searchlight Pictures
- Jim Moir - Controller of BBC Radio 2 (UK)
Business
- Michael Carpenter - Chairman & CEO, Citigroup Global Investments
- John Coomber - CEO, Swiss Re
- Sir Michael Hodgkinson - Chairman, Post Office Ltd; former CEO, BAA Plc
- Tim Martin - Chairman of Wetherspoons
- John Timpson - Chairman, Timpson
International Politics and Royalty
- Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak - Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia
- His Majesty Sultan Tuanku Ja'afar - former King of Malaysia
- His Majesty Sultan Raja Azlan Sha - former King of Malysia
- Tengku Tan Sri Ahmad Rithaudden - former Minister of Defence of Malaysia
- Tuanku Hajjah Bahiyah (d. 2004) - Sultanah of Kedah
- His Excellency Tun Dato Seri Dr. Haji Hamdan Bin Sheik Tahir - Governor of Penang province, Malaysia
- Rt. Hon Peter Ala Adjetey - Speaker of the Ghanaian Parliament
Members of UK Parliament
- Parmjit Dhanda MP - Labour
- David Drew MP - Labour
- John Hayes MP - Conservative
- Jimmy Hood MP - Labour
- Kelvin Hopkins MP - Labour
- Tony Lloyd MP - Labour, former Minister of State at the Foreign Office
- Meg Munn MP - Labour
- John Pugh MP - Liberal Democrat
Other
- The Most Revd and Rt Hon. Dr David Hope - Lord Archbishop of York
- Dame Helen Reeves - Chief Executive of Victim Support
- Sir Richard Tilt - Social Fund Commissioner, former Director General HM Prison Service
Sport
- Kristan Bromley - Bob Skeleton World Cup winner 2003/2004
- Sir Denis Follows - General Secretary, Football Association and Chairman, British Olympic Association
- Brian Moore - England rugby player
- Lynn Simpson - Former world champion canoeist
- Deng Yaping - four times Olympic table tennis champion, voted Chinese female athlete of the century
Writers
- Peter Boardman - author of The Shining Mountain, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literature
- Michael Bracewell - novelist
- Jill Dawson - novelist
- John Harvey - crime writer
- Bert Keizer - Dutch author of Dancing with Mister D: Notes on Life and Death
- D. H. Lawrence - novelist
- Stanley Middleton - novelist, winner of the Booker Prize
- Blake Morrison - novelist, poet, critic and journalist
- Michael Scammell - biographer, translator, Professor of Writing at Columbia University
Organisation of the University
The Chief Officer of the University is the Chancellor, elected by the University Court on the recommendation of the University Council. The chief academic and administrative officer of the University is the Vice-Chancellor, who is assisted by five Pro-Vice Chancellors. The university is divided into five faculties, each headed by a Dean, and 32 schools of study.
The University's governing body is the University Council, which has 33 members, mostly non-academic. Its academic authority is the Senate, consisting of senior academics of the University and elected staff and student representatives. The University's largest forum is the University Court, presided over by the Chancellor.
Chancellors
- 1949-1954 John Campbell Boot, 2nd Baron Trent
- 1954-1971 His Grace William Arthur Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duke of Portland
- 1971-1978 Sir Francis Hill
- 1978-1993 Sir Gordon Hobday
- 1993-2000 Lord Dearing
- 2000- Professor Fujia Yang
Vice-Chancellors
- 1947-1965 Dr Bertrand Hallward
- 1965-1970 Professor Lord Dainton of Hallam Moors FRS
- 1971-1975 Professor Lord Butterfield of Stechford
- 1976-1988 Professor Basil Weedon FRS
- 1988- Professor Sir Colin Campbell
See also:
- China Policy Institute
- Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies
- Nottingham University Business School
- Nottingham University Mountaineering Club
- Nottingham University Press
- Nottingham Trent University is the other University in Nottingham.