The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Firth College in 1879 and Sheffield Technical School in 1884. The University College of Sheffield was subsequently formed by the amalgamation of the three institutions in 1897. It was granted a royal charter as the University of Sheffield in 1905 by King Edward VII.
Sheffield has 21 academic schools organised into five faculties. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £845.2 million, of which £355.8 million was from tuition fees and education contracts (£401.8 million in the year prior), £204.2 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £847.7 million.
The university is one of the original redbrick universities and a founding member of the Russell Group. It is also part of the Worldwide Universities Network, the N8 Group of the eight most research intensive universities in Northern England and the White Rose University Consortium. Six Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Sheffield as alumni or academics.
In 2026, Sheffield was ranked 64th in 'The World's Top Universities' list by Time magazine.
History Origins
The University of Sheffield was formed by the merger of three local institutions: the Sheffield School of Medicine, Firth College, and the Sheffield Technical School. The oldest of these was the Sheffield School of Medicine. Surgeon-apothecary Hall Overend, began training medical students in Sheffield in 1811, conducting and teaching human dissection in an anatomy museum at his home in Church Street. Overend, however, was not 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, 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), referring to the difficulty of acquiring and practicing 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 cities that lacked tertiary institutions. At that time, the steel industry in Sheffield was prospering and the city's population had doubled since the 1840s to around 240,000. In 1871, the university extension scheme arrived in Sheffield, and a group of lecturers from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge travelled to the city giving lectures and educating people about the benefits of tertiary education. Steel manufacturer and former mayor of Sheffield Mark Firth and clergyman Samuel Earnshaw organised courses in English literature and political economy. The popularity of the courses led Firth to donate £20,000 and purchase a site in the city centre (now Leopold Street and West Street) in 1877 to build a new institution for the classes. Firth College opened in 1879. The college saved the medical school from collapse and took over the teaching of basic science to medical students. In 1888 the medical school relocated to a new building on Leopold Street.
A grant was secured in 1883 to fund a professor of metallurgy and mechanical engineering, and former mayor of Sheffield Sir Frederick Mappin began fundraising for a technical department in Firth College in 1884, raising £10,240. This opened in 1886 as the Sheffield Technical School. Many of the steel-making firms in Sheffield contributed to funding the technical school, and research from the school in turn helped develop new processes and products for the companies.
Foundation
Sheffield was in the late 1890s the only large city in England without a university college. William Mitchinson Hicks, principal of Firth College from 1892 to 1897, had an ambition to establish a university in the city. To this end, Hicks worked towards the union of the three higher education institutions in Sheffield, to transform Firth College into a university college. He also extended the college by creating new departments and adding new buildings. In 1897, Firth College merged with the medical school and the technical school by royal charter to form the University College of Sheffield with Hicks served as its first principal. Hicks also advocated that the power to award its own degrees would attract talented staff to Sheffield. Six years after the foundation of the university college, on 18 May 1903, the college council passed a resolution to apply for a royal charter as a university. The university college started to develop its estate soon after: Western House by Weston Park on Western Bank was bought and demolished in 1903 for building a new university property. A building with a traditional collegiate quadrangle (later known as Western Bank building and now Firth Court) was planned on the site. Sir Frederick Mappin later successfully sought financial support from the Sheffield City Council and appealed for public donations. In 1904, steelworkers, coal miners, factory workers and the people of Sheffield donated over £50,000 via penny donations to help found the University of Sheffield.
When the Victoria University, which had consisted of colleges in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, split up into independent universities in the early 1900s, Yorkshire College in Leeds proposed taking the name "Victoria University of Yorkshire", but this was rejected by the Privy Council after University College Sheffield petitioned against it.
The university charter was sealed on 31 May 1905 and the university college became the University of Sheffield. On 12 July 1905, Firth Court on Western Bank was opened by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. St George's Square remained the centre of departments of applied science, and the departments of arts, medicine and science moved to Western Bank.
20th century
In 1905, when the university first opened, there were 363 students, 114 of them full-time, and 71 staff. The Edgar Allen library was established in 1909 and Stephenson Hall, the first hall of residence, opened by 1919, when returning ex-servicemen pushed students numbers briefly over 1,000 after World War I before stabilising at around 750. The university continued to teach non-degree students on courses as diverse as cow keeping, razor grinding and (during the war) munitions making.
Hans Adolf Krebs was appointed as lecturer in pharmacology in 1935. At Sheffield, Krebs and his postgraduate student discovered the citric acid cycle (also known as the Krebs cycle) in 1937, which earned him a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953. In 1938, the university opened the department of biochemistry and Krebs became its first head.
The university's origins in three separate institutions meant it was originally based on two sites: Firth Court on the Western Bank site and the Sir Frederick Mappin Building on the St George's site. Both sites have since expanded to almost come together on opposite sides of the A61 ring road. In 1943, the University Grants Committee predicted a 50 per cent expansion in student numbers once World War II was over. The university grew from its pre-war level of around 750 to 3,000 students by 1946, and there was pressure to expand further. The university announced a plan for development in 1947, which identified how the estate should grow. In the 1950s, the university established departments of chemistry and physics, built a new medical school, and expanded the facilities of law and arts by completing the Western Bank quadrangles, along with other campus developments.
George Porter joined the university as professor of physical chemistry in 1955 and he further developed his Nobel Prize-winning work flash photolysis at Sheffield. Porter was appointed Firth Professor of Chemistry and head of the department of chemistry in 1963.
The Western Bank Library opened in 1959 and the adjacent Arts Tower – the tallest academic building in Europe at the time – in 1965, along with other developments in the 1960s. The 1970s saw a new campus plan by Arup Associates that would have linked the two halves of the campus across the ring road with a glazed concourse, but this was never built. The multi-purpose Octagon Centre was opened in the 1980s.
The Traditional Heritage Museum was opened to the public in 1985 as part of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition. It was created (and curated) by Prof John Widdowson in 1964 and was entirely run by volunteers and students. The museum housed collections including a replica kitchen from the 1920s, reconstructed workshops and retail shops, such as Pollard's tea and coffee. The university decided to close the Museum in 2011 because the building could not afford continued public access. In 2013, the collections from the Traditional Heritage Museum were relocated and are accessible again to the public. The majority of the items was transferred to not-for-profit organisation Green Estate (operators of the Sheffield Manor Lodge). Other major recipients include Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust and Ken Hawley Trust.
In 1987 the university became one of the twelve founding universities of the Northern Consortium, set up to create pathways to recruit international students and now NCUK. The Krebs Institute for Biomolecular Research, named after Hans Krebs, was founded in 1988 as an interdisciplinary research institute drawing staff from multiple departments in the faculty of pure science. In 1995, the university took over the Sheffield and North Trent College of Nursing and Midwifery.
21st century
In 2005, the university bid to continue the nursing and midwife training it had been running since 1995. However, the South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority decided to split the contact between Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, leading the university to pull out after analysing the costs and the operational difficulties associated with providing the training. Following a three-year teach-out of nursing courses, only the graduate school of nursing was expected to remain in operation.
In September 2015, a new six-storey building, The Diamond, was opened. The University Concourse between the students' union and the Alfred Denny building was refurbished in 2019.
On 25 May 2021, the University of Sheffield Executive Board (UEB) voted to close the Department of Archaeology and move two areas into other departments; a world leading institution since its formation in 1976. The decision had been made through a commissioned Institutional Review process and was met with a petition signed by over 40,000 people.
In 2008, the university partnered with BAE Systems to launch a new Centre for Research in Active Control which aimed to improve the stealth of BAE Systems' submarines. In 2012 the Students Union voted in favour of the university ending all links with the arms trade.
In 2015, the court was abolished. This had been the university's supreme governing body since its foundation, with membership including the Sheffield MPs, the bishops of Sheffield and Hallam, the chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, and representatives of professional bodies such as the Royal Society and General Medical Council.