King's College London
Founded 1829. Anglican answer to UCL, home of Photo 51 and the Nightingale nursing school.
Overview
King George IV and the Duke of Wellington backed the founding of King's College in 1829 as an Anglican response to the secular University College London. In the same year Wellington fought a duel with the Earl of Winchilsea, who had attacked him in a letter about the college and Catholic emancipation. Florence Nightingale's nursing school, the first professional nursing school, is now part of King's. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins made the X-ray studies of DNA at King's that led to the double helix. Its Strand campus sits beside Somerset House, and its health faculties span Guy's, St Thomas' and Denmark Hill.
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