The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a member institution of the University of London that specialises in public and global health, epidemiology and tropical medicine. It is focused exclusively on postgraduate education and advanced research.
Founded in 1899 by the Scottish physician Sir Patrick Manson with support from the Parsi philanthropist B. D. Petit, the institution received its Royal Charter in 1924 and moved to its Art Deco headquarters in Keppel Street in 1929. In addition to its London laboratories and teaching facilities, LSHTM operates two large Medical Research Council units: the MRC Unit The Gambia and the MRC/UVRI & LSHTM Uganda Research Unit, giving it a permanent research presence across Africa as well as collaborative sites in more than 100 countries.
The School conducts interdisciplinary research across infectious and chronic disease epidemiology, vaccines, climate and environmental health, and health systems, and its scientists have played prominent roles in major global health emergencies, including the 2013–2016 West African Ebola epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £251.7 million, of which £167.5 million was from research grants and contracts, with expenditures totalling £248.9 million during the same period. The university has one of the largest endowments per student in the United Kingdom.
LSHTM enrols roughly 1,000 postgraduate students on campus each year and a further 3,000 through distance-learning programmes, and employs more than 3,500 staff in the United Kingdom, The Gambia and Uganda. Degrees are awarded under the University of London charter, and since April 2021 the School has been led by its Director, Professor Liam Smeeth CBE.
History
Origins (1899–1913)
The school was founded on October 2, 1899, by Sir Patrick Manson as the London School of Tropical Medicine after the Parsi philanthropist Bomanjee Dinshaw Petit made a donation of £6,666 (US$1,368,844 in 2024). Medical Record – Volume 70 by George Frederick Shrady, Thomas Lathrop Stedman – 1906– Page 26
It was initially located at the Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital in the London Docklands. Just prior to this teaching in tropical medicine had been commenced in 1899 at the Extramural school at Edinburgh and even earlier at London's Livingstone College founded in 1893. Before giving lectures at St George's Hospital, London, in 1895, Livingstone College afforded Manson his first opportunity to teach courses in tropical medicine.Johnson, Ryan (1910) Colonial Mission and Imperial Tropical Medicine: Livingstone College, London, 1893–1914, Social History of Medicine Volume 23, Issue 3 Pp. 549–566 Manson's early career was as a physician in the Far East. On his return to London, he was appointed Medical Advisor to the Colonial Office. He strongly believed that physicians should be trained in tropical medicine to treat British colonial administrators and others working throughout Britain's tropical empire. He also encouraged and mentored Ronald Ross during this period to uncover the correct etiology of malaria, which Ross subsequently discovered in 1897, winning the Nobel Prize for his efforts. The original school was established as part of the Seamen's Hospital Society.
In 1902, the benefactor Petit wrote the following about the institution in a letter to Sir Francis Lovell (Dean of the school), quoted in The Times of London.
Among the school's early achievements were discoveries by George Carmichael Low, who proved filariasis is spread by mosquito bites, and Aldo Castellani, who discovered trypanosomes in the cerebral fluid of those affected by sleeping sickness. Experiments were also conducted by the school's faculty which provided proof that mosquitoes act as the vector in the spread of malaria.
World Wars (1914–1945) During World War I, many of the faculty were conscripted into the army where they often continued to treat or research tropical diseases with the aim of protecting the health of the troops fighting in the Middle Eastern and African campaigns. Meanwhile, enough faculty remained at the school to continue its operations, although enrollment drastically fell during the war. The remaining faculty contributed to the war effort nonetheless by becoming increasingly involved in treating soldiers with dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases after their return from overseas. On the night of January 19, 1917, a TNT explosion from a nearby munition depot damaged the school and hospital, further complicating the school's operations. The school's wartime contributions were acknowledged on October 10, 1917, by a surprise visit from King George V and in 1918 by a visit from Queen Mary, Prince Edward, and Princess Mary.
As a result of the war, the school expected an increase in the amount of patients with tropical diseases and so a resolution was proposed to move the school to Central London to improve upon the school's isolated location. Consequently, the school moved, together with the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, to Endsleigh Gardens in central London, taking over a former hotel which had been used as a hospital for officers during the First World War. The building was officially opened by George VI, then Duke of York, on 11 November 1920. In 1921 the Athlone Committee recommended the creation of an institute of state medicine, which built on a proposal by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop a London-based institution that would lead the world in the promotion of public health and tropical medicine. This enlarged school, now named the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, was granted its Royal Charter in 1924. The school moved to the current building in 1929.
The school remained at its location in London during World War II despite the risk of bombings and an offer for accommodation by Queens' College, Cambridge. The number of students and staff fell as a result of the war, with some staff being called upon for military service. After 1941 and continuing until the end of the war, regular instruction ceased and the school instead started providing short courses in tropical medicine to nurses and doctors of the Allied Forces. On 10 May 1941, a bomb struck the building and caused a fire which was only put out the following morning due to a lack of firemen. Only four people were present at the time and remained unharmed, however, around a sixth of the building was damaged, with particularly the side facing Malet Street sustaining extensive damage. Although the damage was only fully repaired seven years later, teaching of short courses resumed the Monday after the bombing.
Post-war period (1946–1960) The healthcare environment changed in the wake of the war, both nationally and internationally, with the establishment of the National Health Service and the World Health Organization. The Chief Medical Officer and former Dean of LSHTM, Sir Wilson Jameson, played a critical role in the establishment of both.
LSHTM served a crucial role in reshaping scientific research and public health in the post-war period. Sir Austin Bradford Hill, a professor of Medical Statistics at the school, was the statistician on the Medical Research Council Streptomycin in Tuberculosis Trials Committee and their 1948 study evaluating the use of streptomycin in treating tuberculosis, which is generally accepted as the first randomized controlled trial to have been conducted. Two years later Bradford Hill and Sir Richard Doll, a member of the MRC Statistical Research Unit based at LSHTM, were the first to demonstrate the association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. They also set up the well-known British Doctors Study to provide evidence for a causal relationship. In 1951, alumnus Max Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discoveries concerning yellow fever and how to combat it". George Macdonald, professor of tropical hygiene and director of the Ross Institute at LSHTM, was the first to propose the basic reproduction number () in his 1952 study of malaria, which remains a key statistic in the study of infectious diseases to this day. The following year, alumnus Jerry Morris was the first to establish the role of physical exercise in preventing heart disease. Richard Doll established the connection between asbestos and lung cancer in 1955, while two Readers at the school established the connection between air pollution and respiratory diseases in 1958.
End of the 20th century (1961–1999) The university went through various changes during the latter part of the 20th century. In 1962 it acquired its first electronic computer in a collaboration with Birkbeck College, while a year later it built insectaries in its vault with financial support from the Wellcome Trust. Due to the school's need for work with live insects, the insectaries were thought to have housed the largest mosquito farm in the world. In the meantime the school closed its library and expanded the Keppel Street building to increase research and teaching space. Once completed in 1967, the modernised parts were officially opened by Princess Alexandra. In the final years of the millennium, the school launched its first distance learning programmes to an initial enrollment of 149 students for the 1998/1999 cohort.
The faculty of the school continued to make significant contributions to scientific research and public health. This included further work by Austin Bradford Hill, who postulated the Bradford Hill criteria in 1965 to determine causality. The criteria have since been widely used in public health research. LSHTM also started the long-running Whitehall Study in 1967 which found significant social inequalities in health in the 18,000 participants from the UK Civil Service. The Black Report published in 1980, for which alumnus Jerry Morris was one of the contributors, found similar inequalities. In 1972, the first case of lassa fever in the U.K. was diagnosed at the school. The school's faculty were also involved in research projects to advance understanding and prevention of various infectious diseases around this time, such as the Karongo Prevention Study in Malawi. Professors at the university developed the sisterhood method in 1989, thereby increasing the accuracy of maternal mortality data from low-income countries and developing a method which is still recommended by the WHO to this day. The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was launched by the school in 1990 and is still being run with partners at University College London.
Modern era (2000–present) The school went through various expansions in 2004, 2009, 2010, 2017, and 2018 to accommodate the school's rapid growth. The expansion in 2010 was the first time the university expanded outside of its Keppel Street location to Tavistock Place. The new location was originally intended as a joint project with UCL, however, the project was eventually amended and scaled down when UCL pulled out of the project. Tavistock Place was further expanded in 2017 with an additional research facility. Moreover, the MRC Unit The Gambia and the MRC Uganda Research Unit officially joined the university in 2018. These transfers were part of the MRC's long-term programme of transferring units into a host university in order to bring strategic benefits to both parties.