Short answers, pulled from the story.
UCL was founded on the 11th of February 1826 as London University, a joint-stock company that sold shares at £100 each. It was incorporated by royal charter under the name University College, London on the 28th of November 1836.
UCL gained formal university status on the 17th of April 2023, when a supplemental charter was sealed following approval by the Office for Students in 2022. The institution had operated without full university status for nearly 200 years, despite being one of the largest universities in the UK.
Jeremy Bentham is commonly regarded as the "spiritual father" of UCL, though his direct involvement was limited to purchasing share number 633 for £100 paid in nine instalments between December 1826 and January 1830. The institution's principal drivers were James Mill (1773-1836) and Henry Brougham (1778-1868), who were influenced by Bentham's ideas on education and society.
UCL admitted women to its faculties of Arts and Law and of Science in 1878, making it the second college in the UK to admit women alongside men, two years after the University of Bristol did so. Women were not admitted to medical studies until 1917, and the senior common room remained men-only until 1969.
In 1973, Peter Kirstein's research group at UCL became one of only two international nodes on the ARPANET. UCL's implementation of internetworking between the ARPANET and early British academic networks was the first international heterogeneous resource sharing network, and UCL adopted TCP/IP in 1982, ahead of the ARPANET itself.
UCL academics discovered five of the naturally occurring noble gases, discovered hormones, invented the vacuum tube, and made foundational advances in modern statistics. UCL also opened the first department and chair of chemical engineering in the UK in 1923. As of 2025-33 Nobel Prize laureates and three Fields Medal recipients have been affiliated with UCL.