FOLLOW IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS
Join a community of global innovators and pioneers whose achievements have helped shape the modern world – a place where 25 Nobel Prize winners have worked or studied. You’ll study in an academic environment that helps brilliant thinkers turn inspiration into reality, encouraging enterprise, experimentation and creative thinking.
Here are a few highlights of our history
1904
Catherine Chisholm
becomes the first woman to graduate in Medicine from Manchester Medical School. She helped set up the Manchester Hospital for Babies.
1906
Christabel Pankhurst
who would become a leading figure in the suffragette movement, becomes the first woman to graduate from the university in Law.
1915
William Bragg
while still a research student, becomes the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
1917
Ernest Rutherford
becomes the first person to create an artificial nuclear reaction in a laboratory, ushering in a new era of nuclear research
1945
Ellen Wilkinson
becomes Britain’s first female Minister of Education. Born in Manchester, Ellen won a scholarship to study at the university and entered politics after graduating
1948
Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn
successfully run a program on ‘The Baby’, the world’s first digital stored- program computer.
1948
Alan Turing
one of the WWII codebreakers, completes pioneering work in machine intelligence at Manchester, paving the way for artificial intelligence.
1957
Bernard Lovell
completes the Lovell Telescope, the world’s largest steerable radio telescope at the time, at Jodrell Bank.
1974
Jean McFarlane
is appointed as the first Professor of Nursing in the UK by the university and goes on to establish the country’s first nursing degree.*
1979
Arthur Lewis
Britain’s first black professor, becomes the first black winner of a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.**
1993
Michael Smith
a Manchester PhD graduate, receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on DNA engineering.
2010
Dame Sally Davis
Manchester’s alumna is appointed as the UK’s first female Chief Medical Officer.
*Permission to use reproduction material from the Royal College of Nursing. **Permission courtesy of Keystone/ Stringer/ Getty
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester