The breadth of research at The University of Manchester is unrivalled and includes everything from Aeronautics to Zoology. Manchester's reputation as a leading institution, however, is built on decades of innovation dating back to the 19th century.
At the birth of the industrial revolution Manchester was the most important industrial city in the world. As a result, great scientists came to Manchester and in 1824 established the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, which would later become part of The University of Manchester.
Manchester was home to John Dalton, who developed atomic theory and was considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of his time. The University was also where Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford first split the atom and advanced atomic orbital theory. Rutherford worked alongside Hans Wilhelm Geiger who developed at Manchester a prototype that would later become the famous Geiger counter.
The University of Manchester boasts 25 Nobel Prize winners among its former and current staff and students, in a range of subjects from Botany to Economic Sciences to Physics. In 2010 Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of graphene, the world's thinnest material.
Staff at Manchester have been inventing and developing for almost 200 years. However Manchester's most famous invention is the world's first computer. In 1947 Tom Kilburn and Sir Frederick Williams produced 'Baby', the world's first stored-program computer. By 1949 the team had built the full-sized Manchester Mark 1, the first computer to feature the ancestor of what we now know as a hard disc.
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