About Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England, 105 west of London.
With an approximate population of 400,000, and metropolitan area of 550,000, it is England's sixth, and the United Kingdom's eighth, most populous city, one of England's core cities and the most populous city in South West England. It received a royal charter in 1155 and was granted county status in 1373. For half a millennium it was the second or third largest English city, until the rapid rise of Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham in the Industrial Revolution in the later part of the 18th century. It borders on the unitary districts of Bath and North East Somerset (BANES), North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, between the cities of Bath, Gloucester and Newport, and has a short coastline on the estuary of the River Severn, which flows into the Bristol Channel.
Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a "redbrick" chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status in 1992. The city also has two dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College, and two theological colleges, Trinity College, Bristol & Wesley College, Bristol. The city has 129 infant, junior and primary schools,[49] 17 secondary schools,[50] and three city learning centres. There are also independent schools in the city, including Clifton College, Colston's School, Clifton High School, Badminton School, Bristol Cathedral School, Bristol Grammar School, Redland High School, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (an all-boys school) and Red Maids' School, the oldest girls' school in England, founded in 1634 by John Whitson.
In 2005 the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised Bristol's ties to science and technology by naming it one of three "science cities", and promising funding for further development of science in the city, with a 300 million "Science Park" planned at Emerson's Green. As well as research at the two universities and Southmead Hospital, science education is important in the city, with At-Bristol, Bristol Zoo, Bristol Festival of Nature and the Create Centre being prominent local institutions involved in science communication. The city has a history of scientific achievement, including Sir Humphry Davy, the 19th century scientist who worked in Hotwells and discovered laughing gas. Bishopston has given the world two Nobel Prize winning physicists: Paul Dirac for crucial contributions to quantum mechanics in 1933, and Cecil Frank Powell, for a photographic method of studying nuclear processes and associated discoveries in 1950. The city was birth place of Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 Mars lander project, and is home to Adam Hart-Davis, presenter of various science related television programmes, and the psychologists Susan Blackmore and Richard Gregory.
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