Manchester is the first British university this century to be founded under Royal Charter. The Foundation Declaration expresses its defining ideals and aspirations.
"In commemorating our founders, benefactors and distinguished predecessors, we commit ourselves to the cause they served of nurturing The University of Manchester as a scholarly community engaged in a common search for knowledge and wisdom. We affirm our resolve to make our University a place where students, whatever their backgrounds, learn to pursue truth through rational inquiry; where researchers engaged in discovery are also teachers; where research is valued both for its own sake and for the betterment of the world; where academic freedom is encouraged and protected; where the cultivation of cognitive skills, independence of mind, intellectual integrity and artistic expression promotes understanding and appreciation of the best that is known, thought and created in the world; and where students and staff are encouraged, as responsible citizens of their own societies and of the international community, to embrace fundamental human and civil rights as the only just, sustainable basis for a humane civilization.
We honour John Owens, founder of Owens College and, through it, of The Victoria University of Manchester; and Benjamin Heywood and his fellow founders of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, whose legacy grew into the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. By virtue of their foresight, dedication and generosity, they have also become the founders of this, The University of Manchester.
As their privileged successors, we salute those into whose labours we have entered, uniting ourselves in spirit with the great pioneers and scholars who laid the foundations upon which we now build. Among the 22 Nobel Laureates who have been associated with our predecessor universities, Arthur Lewis and John Hicks in Economics, Alexander Todd and Ernest Rutherford in Chemistry, Hans Bethe, Patrick Blackett, Niels Bohr, William Bragg, John Cockcroft and Nevill Mott in Physics and Archibald Hill, a Professor of Medicine, have served as academics, researchers or senior officers. We celebrate them, and many others of like distinction, across many disciplines, who by their gifts and service fostered the growth welfare of the two universities. At the same time we look forward, as they did, to future generations who will join the fellowship that they, and we, will have created.
In celebrating Foundation Day our high and firm resolve is to be worthy of the hopes and aspirations of our predecessors. Upon the foundation they have laid, we commit ourselves to the task of making this University one of the world's great centres of learning, for the good of the City of Manchester, the North-West of England, the United Kingdom and the wider international community."
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