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 based in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, and there is a UCL campus in Doha, Qatar specialised in archaeology, conservation and museum studies (to be transferred to Hamad Bin Khalifa University in 2020 at the end of UCL's contact with the Qatar Foundation). From 2010 to 2015 UCL ran a University Preparatory Certificate course at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, and had a campus in Adelaide, Australia from 2010 to 2017. Although UCL is a constituent college of the federal University of London, in most ways it is comparable with free-standing, self-governing and independently funded universities, and it awards its own