Short answers, pulled from the story.
LSE was founded in 1895 by Beatrice Webb, Sidney Webb, Graham Wallas, and George Bernard Shaw, all members of the Fabian Society. The school was initially funded by a bequest of £20,000 from the estate of Henry Hunt Hutchinson, a Fabian lawyer. The proposal to establish the school was conceived at a breakfast meeting on the 4th of August 1894.
As of 2025, LSE is affiliated with 21 Nobel Prize laureates in economics, peace, and literature. In the 1970s alone, four Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences went to LSE-affiliated economists: John Hicks in 1972, Friedrich Hayek in 1974, James Meade in 1977, and Arthur Lewis in 1979.
Since the school's founding in 1895, over 40 world leaders have taught or studied at LSE. Since 1990 alone, LSE has educated 24 prime ministers or presidents, the second highest number of any university in the United Kingdom. LSE alumni include two presidents of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and Ursula von der Leyen.
The beaver was adopted as LSE's mascot in February 1922, chosen for its associations with foresight, constructiveness, and industrious behaviour. The Latin motto, rerum cognoscere causas, is taken from Virgil's Georgics and means "to know the causes of things"; it was suggested by Professor Edwin Cannan. Both symbols were adopted on the recommendation of a twelve-person committee that included eight students.
In February 2011, LSE director Howard Davies resigned after the school accepted a £1.5 million donation linked to Muammar Gaddafi's family while also having enrolled one of his sons. LSE set up an external inquiry into the school's relationship with the Libyan regime, conducted by former lord chief justice Harry Woolf.
LSE is located in central London, in the area historically known as Clare Market, near the boundary between Covent Garden and Holborn. The campus now occupies around 30 buildings between Kingsway and Aldwych, in the London Borough of Camden and Westminster. The school owns 11 student halls of residence across London and operates a West End theatre, the Peacock.