Papers of past staff members:

Staff papers deposited in the Archives include those of some of the most significant names of the nineteenth century scientific world. These include:

• T. H. Huxley - Biologist, Palaeontologist, School of Mines and Royal College of Science, “Darwin’s Bulldog”
• Sir Lyon Playfair - Chemist, School of Mines, Diplomat, and 1851 Commissioner
• Henry Edward Armstrong – Chemistry, City & Guilds
• Members of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who mapped Britain geologically for the first time – including Sir Henry De La Beche and Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay - Geologist, School of Mines
• Sir Norman Lockyer – who discovered helium and founded the journal Nature
• Nobel Prize winner Denis Gabor - Electrical Engineer, inventor of holography and the flat television tube
• Herbert Dingle - Physicist/ Natural Philosopher
• Baron Willis Jackson of Burnley - Electrical Engineer, Pro-Rector of Imperial College
• Sir Alec Skempton - founder of Soil Science
• Alan Bishop - Soil Scientist
• Stanley Runcorn - Geophysicist
• John Stodart Kennedy – Zoologist
• Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson – Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry

The student body:

The student body is represented by material from the Student Union and the Constituent College Unions. This includes information on their clubs and mascots. Famous students of the nineteenth century include H. G. Wells and William Perkin, discoverer of aniline dyes. Student lecture notebooks exist for nineteenth century lectures in Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Mathematics.

Papers relating to the original Constituent Colleges:

• The Royal College of Chemistry
• The Royal School of Mines
• Royal College of Science
• City & Guilds College
• Wye College

Medical Schools:

• Charing Cross Hospital
• Charing Cross Hospital Medical School
• Westminster Hospital Medical School
• Westminster and Charing Cross Medical School
• National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI)
• Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS)
• Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

For more information relating to UK Hospital records, please see The Hospital Database - a joint project of the Wellcome Library and The National Archives.

Historical Archives Catalogues:

Below are links to the catalogues we currently have available online or as searchable pdfs.

Please note that the pdfs were scanned from the paper originals using OCR (optical character recognition) software and so searches may not be 100% accurate.

Additional Resources:

Catalogues of collections at Imperial Historical Archives are also available online via AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25, a consortial project).

In addition, catalogues are also available on the Archives Hub website, and on the National Archives Discovery database.

The Abdus Salam Library has a number of special collections of historical interest originating from the university's departments and medical schools. They include both early printed books (pre-1850) and later publications.