King's College London is a publicresearch university located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federalUniversity of London. It is arguably the third-oldest university in England, having been founded byKing George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829 and received its royal charter in the same year. St Thomas' Hospital, which is now a teaching hospital of King's College London School of Medicine, has roots dating back to 1173 with its medical school established in 1550. King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London in 1836. It has grown through mergers, including with Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College of Science and Technology (in 1985), the Institute of Psychiatry (in 1997), and the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals and Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery (in 1998).
King's has its main campus on the Strand in central London, and has three other Thames-side campuses and another in Denmark Hill in south London. Its academic activities are organised into nine faculties which are subdivided into numerous departments, centres and research divisions. King's is the largest centre for graduate and post-graduate medical teaching and biomedical research in Europe; it is home to six Medical Research Council centres and is a founding member of the King's Health Partners academic health sciences centre. It is a member of numerous academic organisations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association and the Russell Group, and forms part of the 'golden triangle'of leading British universities. King's has around 25,000 students and 6,113 staff and had a total income of £604 million in 2013/14, of which £172 million was from research grants and contracts.
