education of women. The Ladies' Department of King's College London was opened in Kensington Square in 1885, which later in 1902 became King's College Women's Department.
=== 20th century ===
The King's College London Act 1903 (3 Edw. 7. c. xcii) abolished all remaining religious tests for staff, except within the Theological department. In 1910, King's was (with the exception of the Theological department) merged into the University of London under the King's College London (Transfer) Act 1908 (8 Edw. 7. c. xxxix), losing its legal independence.
During the First World War, the medical school was opened to women for the first time. From 1916 to 1921, the college's Department of Italian was headed by a woman, Linetta de Castelvecchio. The end of the war saw an influx of students, which strained existing facilities to the point where some classes were held in the Principal's house.
In World War II, the buildings of King's College London were used by the Auxiliary Fire Service with a number of King's staff, mainly those then known as college servants, serving as firewatchers. Parts of the Strand building, the quadrangle, and the roof of apse and stained glass windows of the chapel suffered bomb damage in the Blitz. During post-war reconstruction, the vaults beneath the quadrangle were replaced by a two-storey laboratory, which opened in 1952, for the departments of Physics and Civil and Electrical Engineering.
One of the most famous pieces of scientific research performed at King's were the crucial contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, together with Raymond Gosling, Alex Stokes, Herbert Wilson, and other associates at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King's.
Major reconstruction of King's began in 1966 following the publication of the Robbins Report on Higher Education. A new block facing the Strand designed by E. D. Jefferiss Mathews was opened in 1972. In 1980 King's regained its legal independence under a new …
