is a major centre for medical teaching and research and is part of UCLPartners, the world's largest academic health science centre. Queen Mary runs programmes at the University of London Institute in Paris, taking over the functions provided by Royal Holloway.
There are nine Nobel laureates among Queen Mary's alumni, and current and former staff. Notable alumni include Ronald Ross, who discovered the origin and cure for malaria; Davidson Nicol, who discovered the breakdown of insulin in the human body; British politician Peter Hain; and Andrew Pollard, the chief investigator of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
== History ==
=== St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and The London Hospital Medical College ===
The Medical College of The Royal London Hospital (now part of the School of Medicine and Dentistry) was England's first medical school when it opened in 1785.
In 1850, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first fully qualified female doctor in the UK, after training at St Bartholomew's Hospital.
=== People's Palace ===
The predecessor to Queen Mary College was founded in the mid-Victorian era as a People's Palace when growing awareness of conditions in London's East End led to drives to provide facilities for local inhabitants, popularised in the 1882 novel All Sorts of Conditions of Men – An Impossible Story by Walter Besant, which told of how a rich and clever couple from Mayfair went to the East End to build a ”Palace of Delight, with concert halls, reading rooms, picture galleries, art and designing schools." Although not directly responsible for the conception of the People's Palace, the novel did much to popularise it.
The trustees of the Beaumont Trust, administering funds left by Barber Beaumont, purchased the site of the former Bancroft's School from the Drapers' Company. On 20 May 1885, the Drapers' Court of Assistants resolved to grant £20,000 "for the provision of the technical schools of the People's Palace." The foundation stone was laid on 28 June 1886, and on 14 May 1887 Queen Victoria …
