We are the trustee of over 100 trust funds, used to support academic activities at our member institutions, the central academic bodies and Senate House Library.
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Science and Mathematics Trust Funds
We are the trustee of over 100 trust funds, used to support academic activities at our federation members, the School of Advanced Study and Senate House Library.
The trust funds were established following generous donations from supporters. Some are almost as old as the University itself, dating back to the 1850s, while many others have been created since 2000. Please find details of our Science and Mathematics Trust Funds below.
Science and Mathematics Trust Funds
The Batt Bequest was given to the University in 1962 from the Thomas Witherden Batt Foundation. The gift was given with two specified purposes and so it was split into two separate Trust Funds, the Batt Bequest and the Batt Scholarship. The Batt Bequest, the smaller of the two, was to be used to pay the cost of administering the Batt Scholarships.
The Batt Scholarships follow the second part of the Foundation’s gift to the University. The scholarships are available to undergraduate and postgraduate science students at University College London.
The Sheina Marshall Memorial Fund was established in 1992 following a bequest from Miss Dorothy Marshall. The fund was to commemorate Miss Marshall’s sister, Sheina, who had been a prominent and distinguished figure in at the University Marine Biological Station Millport. Between 1993 and 2013 the trust fund was used to fund Sheina Marshall PhD Scholarships at Millport. However, following the transfer of the Station to the Field Studies Council at the beginning of 2014, the University altered the fund’s uses to ensure it remained within the terms of the trust and for the benefit of University of London students.
The Sheina Marshall Memorial Fund is open to all Colleges which undertake marine biological courses and research at Millport. It currently supports students at Queen Mary and Royal Holloway, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
The Valerie Myerscough Studentships were created as a memorial to the former Queen Mary academic following a bequest from her father. Dr Valerie Myerscough, who tragically died in 1980 at the age of 38, was accepted at Royal Holloway aged just 16 and was by all accounts an exceptional student. In 1962 she received the highest ever mark in Mathematics at the University of London until the restructuring of the degree system, went on to win the University’s Lubbock Prize and was awarded the Sherbrooke Studentship, and eventually attained a PhD. As an academic Myerscough spent time as the Miller Fellow at the University of California at Berkley, before returning to the University of London as a lecturer in Queen Mary College’s department of Applied Mathematics.
The Valerie Myerscough Studentships are tenable at both Colleges with which Valerie Myerscough had a close connection, Queen Mary and Royal Holloway, in Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics; all subjects closely related to Dr Myerscough. The University pays over the income from the fund each year to these Colleges who administer and award the studentships.
In 1943, Mr Frederick Perren bequeathed a substantial sum of money for the “furtherance of astronomical knowledge among the general public and the assistance of student” by providing for research, as well as “facilities for lectures and for practical observation of the celestial bodies including the provision of the necessary buildings equipment and staff.” The University took the view that the most effective way of promoting Astronomy would be to create the Perren Chair in Astronomy, which was created at University College London and still exists within the College’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The Perren Fund continues to support the field of Astronomy at both UCL, where it supports studentships, and Queen Mary, where it funds the Perren MSc Bursary, the Perren Visiting Professorship and Perren PhD Studentship. In recent years it has also funded some large one-off grants to both Colleges, including over £100,000 to refurbish the University Observatory at the UCL, £23,000 to purchase a new dome for the Queen Mary Astronomical Observatory and £135,000 to help Queen Mary join the NGTS Consortium.
The Tooke Chair in Economics and Statistics was created in 1859 following a benefaction from the Statistical Society to King’s College London in honour of Thomas Tooke, an English economist known for writing on money and his work on economic statistics, who had died in 1858. The trust fund was transferred to the University of London in 1909 when King’s became an incorporated member of the University. It continued to support an academic chair at King’s until 1931, when it was moved to the London School of Economics and Political Science, where it continues to support the Tooke Chair today.
