Mason Science College was founded by Josiah Mason in 1875 and its building in Edmund Street, Birmingham, England, was opened by Thomas Henry Huxley on 1 October 1880. In 1900 it was incorporated into the new University of Birmingham.
Notable alumni include:
- Francis William Aston, British chemist and physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister.
- Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister.
- Sir Henry Fowler, locomotive engineer
- C.W. Hobley, pioneering colonial administrator in Kenya
- Frank Horton FRS Professor of Physics at Royal Holloway College and Vice-Chancellor of the University of London 1939-45
- Henry Eliot Howard, ornithologist
- Constance Naden, Poet & Philosopher
- John Berry Haycraft discovered an anticoagulant created by the leech, which he named hirudin
The original Victorian Neo-Gothic building was demolished in 1962, along with the original Central Public Library and the Birmingham and Midland Institute, as part of the redevelopment within the inner ring road. The current Central Library stands on the site of the old college.
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or college:
“The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)