The University of Leeds is a public research university located in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1874 as the Yorkshire Academy of Sciences. In 1884, it merged with Leeds Medical School (founded in 1831) and was renamed Yorkshire College. It became part of the Commonwealth University of Victoria in 1887 and joined Owens College (formerly Manchester University) and Liverpool University College (i.e. University of Liverpool). In 1904, King Edward VII awarded the Royal Charter to the University of Leeds.
The university has 36,250 students and is the fifth largest university in the UK (out of 169 universities). Since 2006, the university has been ranked in the top five in the number of applications received in the UK (tied with the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Nottingham and University of Edinburgh). Leeds’ income in 2017/18 was £760.2 million, of which 137.1 million pounds came from research grants and contracts. The university’s financial donation amounted to 77.2 million pounds (2017-18 fiscal year), which is outside the top ten universities in the UK in financial donation.
Notable alumni include the current leader of the opposition party, Keir Starmer, the former Secretary of State Jack Straw, the former co-chair of the Conservative Party Sayeeda Warsi, and Piers Sellers (United States) NASA astronaut) and six Nobel Prize winners.