in 1909, allowed the opening of a new medical school and an engineering school – two subjects that remain among the university's greatest strengths.
In 1908, gifts from the Fry and Wills families, particularly £100,000 from Henry Overton Wills III (£6m in today's money), were provided to endow a university for Bristol and the West of England, provided that a royal charter could be obtained within two years. In December 1909, the king granted such a charter and erected the University of Bristol. Henry Wills became its first chancellor and Conwy Lloyd Morgan the first vice-chancellor. Wills died in 1911 and in tribute his sons George and Harry built the Wills Memorial Building, starting in 1913 and finally finishing in 1925. Today, it houses parts of the academic provision for earth sciences and law, and graduation ceremonies are held in its Great Hall. The Wills Memorial Building is a Grade II* listed building.
In 1920, George Wills bought the Victoria Rooms and endowed them to the university as a students' union.
The building now houses the Department of Music and is a Grade II* listed building.
At the point of foundation, the university was required to provide for the local community. This mission was behind the creation of the Department of Extra-Mural Adult Education in 1924 to provide courses to the local community. This mission continues today; a new admissions policy specifically caters to the "BS" postcode area of Bristol.
Among the famous names associated with Bristol in this early period is Paul Dirac, who graduated in 1921 with a degree in engineering, before obtaining a second degree in mathematics in 1923 from Cambridge. For his subsequent pioneering work on quantum mechanics, he was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics. Later in the 1920s, the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory was opened by Ernest Rutherford. It has since housed several Nobel Prize winners: Cecil Frank Powell (1950); Hans Albrecht Bethe (1967); and Nevill Francis Mott (1977). The laboratory stands on the same site today, close to the …
