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). 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. 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.
This institution, whilst according ample scope to students of diseases that well nigh devastate the East, will be the means of bringing the Western and Eastern minds together to afford help to the suffering East, and thus cementing that union of hearts. 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.
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