is the only Welsh member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities. Academics and alumni of the university have included four heads of state or government and two Nobel laureates. As of 2023, the university's academics include 17 fellows of the Royal Society, 11 fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, seven fellows of the British Academy, 21 fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences and 32 fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences.
== History ==
=== University college ===
The foundation of the university college in Cardiff that was to become Cardiff University was part of the Welsh university movement of the second half of the 19th century, which also led to the foundation of the colleges at Aberystwyth and Bangor (now Aberystwyth and Bangor universities) and the federal University of Wales. The movement began at a meeting in London in 1854 called by Hugh Owen, including leaders of Welsh theological colleges and members of parliament. This meeting discussed establishing university colleges in Wales along the same lines as the Queen's Colleges established the previous decade in Ireland, and produced a formal proposal, the "Outline of Constitution for Proposed Welsh Queen's Colleges".
Discussions on the founding of a university college in South Wales were revived in 1879, when a group of Welsh and English MPs urged the government to consider the poor provision of higher and intermediate education in Wales and "the best means of assisting any local effort which may be made for supplying such deficiency."
In August 1880, William Ewart Gladstone's government appointed a departmental committee to conduct "an enquiry into the nature and extent of intermediate and higher education in Wales", chaired by the 1st Baron Aberdare and consisting of Viscount Emlyn, the Reverend Prebendary H. G. Robinson, Henry Richard, John Rhys and Lewis Morris. The Aberdare Report, as it came to be known, took evidence from a wide range of sources and over 250 witnesses and recommended a college each for North …
