University College London UCL as alumni, faculty or researchers. UCL was founded on 11 February 1826 under the name London University, as an alternative to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge. London University's first Warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first scientist to head a British university. Despite the commonly held belief that the philosopher Jeremy Bentham was the founder of UCL, his direct involvement was limited to the purchase of share No. 633, at a cost of £100 paid in nine instalments between December 1826 and January 1830. In 1828 he did nominate a friend to sit on the council,
University College London Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association and the Universities Research Association. UCL has a major collaboration with Yale University, the Yale UCL Collaborative, and has hundreds of other research and teaching partnerships, including around 150 research links and 130 student-exchange partnerships with European universities. UCL has been a member of the SES engineering and physical sciences research alliance since May 2013, which it formed with the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Southampton and Imperial College London (King's College London subsequently joined in 2016). UCL is a member of the Thomas Young Centre, an alliance of London research groups