Short answers, pulled from the story.
King's College London was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. It opened its doors in October 1831 with the cleric William Otter as its first principal.
Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling, Alex Stokes, Herbert Wilson and their colleagues at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics made crucial contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953. Their work was conducted at King's College London.
George Finch-Hatton, the 10th Earl of Winchilsea, accused the Duke of Wellington of harbouring designs to introduce Popery into every department of the State after Wellington supported both the founding of King's and the Roman Catholic Relief Act. Wellington demanded satisfaction, and the two men met in Battersea Fields on the 21st of March 1829. Winchilsea did not fire his pistol; Wellington fired wide.
The Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care was established by Florence Nightingale in 1860 as the first nursing school in the world to be continuously connected to a fully serving hospital and medical school. It became part of King's College London in 1993 and is the oldest professional school of nursing in the world.
Fourteen Nobel Prize laureates are counted among the alumni and staff of King's College London or institutions that later merged with it.
In 2024/25, King's College London reported total income of £1.377 billion, including £260.5 million from research grants and contracts. It holds the fourth largest endowment of any university in the UK, behind only Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, and is the largest university endowment in London.