Royal College of Science
The Royal College of Science is a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it is a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London receive an Associateship to the Royal College of Science. Organisations linked with the college include the Royal College of Science Union and the Royal College of Science Association.
History
The Royal College of Science has its earliest origins in the
In 1872-3 the College of Chemistry moved into a new building at
The Science and Art Department was keen to improve the quality of technical education, in particular the systematic training of school teachers, and so new classes in mathematics, astronomy, botany and agriculture were added, alongside the departments of mechanics, metallurgy and geology which soon also moved from Jermyn Street. (Mineralogy and mining remained behind at the
The Normal School of Science, responsible for subjects including physics, chemistry, mechanics, biology and agriculture, steadily established its own identity, and in 1890 the name Royal College of Science was granted by Royal Consent.
The RCS and the
In 2002, Imperial abolished all the constituent colleges, including the Royal College of Science, in favour of a new faculty structure. The RCS was split into the Faculties of Physical and Life Sciences. However, in 2005 it was announced that the Faculties of Physical and Life Sciences would be re-merged to form the Faculty of Natural Sciences. This re-forms the original RCS structure, encompassing all the science departments of Imperial College. Overall, it has amounted to no more than a name change from RCS to Faculty of Natural Sciences,[2] and the new faculty students' union has resurrected the name "Royal College of Science Union".
The building
In the years following the establishment of the Normal School of Science in 1881, space became pressing as the college expanded, so work began in 1900 on new premises. In 1906 the RCS moved into an imposing new building designed by Sir
The building has mostly now been demolished,[3] the western wing in 1961 to make way for a new biochemistry building, and the central section in the mid-1970s; but part of the eastern wing still survives as the Chemistry (RCS) building.
References
- ^ "Albertopolis: Victoria And Albert Museum : Henry Cole Wing". Royal Institute of British Architects. Archived from the original on 28 September 2012. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
- ^ Live! – News: Science Faculties to Re-Merge Archived 31 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b "Albertopolis: Royal College of Science". Royal Institute of British Architects. Archived from the original on 2 October 2012. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
- The Builders' Journal and Architectural Engineer: 102–110. 25 December 1907.
Sources
- F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), Imperial College, Survey of London: volume 38: South Kensington Museums Area (1975), pp. 233–247.
- Harold Allan, Physics in South Kensington
- Bill Griffith, Chemistry at Imperial College: the first 150 years
- Hannah Gay, East end, west end: Science education, culture and class in mid-Victorian London, Canadian Journal of History, Aug 1997
- Hannah Gay, The History of Imperial College London, 1907–2007, World Scientific, 2007