Queen Mary has a long, proud, and distinctive history built on four historic institutions stretching back to 1785 and beyond. Its founding institutions are St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London Hospital Medical College, Westfield College, and Queen Mary College.

1123

• St Bartholomew’s Hospital is founded to help the poor of West Smithfield in the suburbs of the City of London. Although it isn’t officially recognized, medical education takes place.

1740

• The London Hospital, known as the London Infirmary, is founded to help poor communities living in London’s East End. Although it isn’t officially recognized, medical education takes place.

1785

• The London Hospital Medical College is founded; it is England's first official medical school. One of the founders is Sir William Blizard, renowned for his teaching of anatomy, physiology, and surgery.

1791

• St. Bartholomew’s Medical School is formally recognized with the building of a lecture theatre. Up until then, surgeon John Abernethy, one of the school’s founders, gave lectures in his home.

1834

• Sir James Paget, an English surgeon and one of the founders of scientific medical pathology, enrols as a student at St. Bartholomew’s Medical School.

2000

• Queen Mary and Westfield College changes its public name to Queen Mary University of London.

2004

• Queen Mary starts to offer a joint degree programme with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, one of China's top engineering universities. This is the first programme of its kind to be approved by China’s Ministry of Education.

2005

• Nobel Prize Winner, Harold Pinter, gives a public reading to mark the refurbishment of the studio named for him within the Faculty of Arts.

2009

• The Centre of the Cell, the world's first science education centre located within a working research laboratory, opens at the Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science.

2012

• Queen Mary becomes one of the 24 leading UK universities that make up the prestigious Russell Group.