RCSU Science Challenge

The Challenge is organised by a member of the RCSU committee - the Science Challenge Chair. The Chair for the 2012 competition is RCSU Vice-President Paul Beaumont. Please email science.challenge@imperial.ac.uk if you would like to get in touch regarding any aspect of this year's Challenge.

Sponsors

This competition would never happen without the support of our sponsors. This year the Science Challenge is generously supported by both the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial, and Accenture Management Consultants. Representatives from Accenture will be present at the Launch, as well as holding a series of workshops and hands-on CV and team building sessions through the year. Both of our sponsor's support goes towards paying for the Launch, the Final and the Cash Prizes. Other prizes this year have been kindly donated by past students and companies, all of which will be credited on the 'Prizes' page when launched.

The Royal College of Science Union

More information about the Royal College of Science Union may be found on our main website, RCSU.org.uk

About The Royal College of Science

A brief history, courtesy of "Albertopolis: Royal College of Science"

The Royal College of Science has its earliest origins in the Royal College of Chemistry founded under the auspices of Prince Albert in 1845, located first in Hanover Square and then from 1848 in somewhat cheaper premises in Oxford Street. Cash-strapped from the start as a private institution, in 1853 it was merged in with the School of Mines, founded in 1851 in Jermyn Street, and placed under the newly-created British government Science and Art Department, although it continued to retain its own premises and substantially its own identity.

In 1872-3 the College of Chemistry moved into a new building at South Kensington (now the Henry Cole wing of the Victoria and Albert museum), along with the physics and biology classes previously taught at the School of Mines. The building, built on land acquired for "educational purposes" by the commissioners of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and next to another of Science and Art Department's projects the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A), had originally been intended to be a new school of naval architecture. But the scientists pressed the need for much better laboratory space, so the school of naval architecture instead went to Greenwich. One notable advocate for the new facilities was T.H. Huxley, who soon put them to good use, pioneering the greatly expanded use of laboratory work in biology teaching.

The Science and Art Department was keen to improve the quality of technical education, in particular the systematic training of school teachers, and so new classes in mathematics, astronomy, botany and agriculture were added, alongside the departments of mechanics, metallurgy and geology which soon also moved from Jermyn Street. (Mineralogy and mining remained behind at the Museum of Practical Geology until the 1890s). In recognition of its broadened scope the "Metropolitan School of Science applied to Mining and the Arts", as it was officially known, was re-established in 1881 as the "Normal School of Science and Royal School of Mines", under Huxley as dean, the name being based on that of the École Normale in Paris.

The Normal School of Science, responsible for subjects including physics, chemistry, mechanics, biology and agriculture, steadily established its own identity, and in 1890 the name Royal College of Science was granted by Royal Consent.

The RCS and the Royal School of Mines subsequently merged in 1907 with the City and Guilds Central Technical College to form the Imperial College of Science and Technology, each continuing as a Constituent College of Imperial, which then joined the University of London in 1929. This administrative structure continued until 2002, surviving Imperial's mergers with a number of medical schools, which were formed into a fourth constituent college; and Imperial's merger in 2000 with Wye College, of which roughly one-fifth became designated as part of the Royal College of Science.