also include several heads of state, Home Secretaries, Court of Appeal judges, Booker Prize winners, astronauts and Olympic gold medallists.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
The University of Sheffield was originally formed by the merger of three local institutions: the Sheffield School of Medicine, Firth College, and the Sheffield Technical School. With a history dating back to as early as the 1810s, the Sheffield School of Medicine is the university's oldest predecessor institution, which is also the oldest higher education establishment in Sheffield. In 1795, the General Infirmary was opened, becoming the first hospital in the city. Because of the apprenticeship-type training, the medical education at that time was largely unstructured. Regarded as the father of Sheffield's medical education, surgeon apothecary Hall Overend began to train medical students in 1811. His school of anatomy and medicine was externally recognised in 1828, and he conducted and taught human dissection in an anatomy museum at his home in Church Street. Overend, however, was not officially registered as a lecturer with the Society of Apothecaries, a recognised body for medical education. Physicians and surgeons of the General Infirmary suggested that a school associated with the hospital would be highly eligible for recognition by the society. As a result, in 1828, a public meeting was called by physician Sir Arnold Knight, and supported by Overend, to establish a new medical school. The Sheffield Medical Institution was formally opened a year later in 1829 on Surrey Street, with the Latin motto Ars longa vita brevis (Art is long, life is short), which refers to the difficulty to acquire and practice the art of Medicine. Knight laid the foundation stone and delivered the opening lecture.
The University Extension Movement emerged in the 1870s with the aim of providing education in the city which lacked any tertiary institutions. During the period, the steel industry in Sheffield was prospering and the city's population was doubled to around …
