Public university in Manchester, England.
It has its origins in a nonsectarian college for men founded in 1851. It became a university in 1880, having established colleges in Leeds and Liverpool which later (1903) became universities in their own right. Ernest Rutherford conducted important research on atomic physics at Manchester, and one of the first modern computers was built there in the late 1940s. The university grants undergraduate and advanced academic and professional degrees in a broad range of subjects.