A few facts about the University of East Anglia

• Students

  Over 13,000 students: approximately 9,900 undergraduates and 3,300 postgraduates.

  1,200 international students from 100 countries worldwide.

  Former students include Booker Prize winning authors Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro; comedy writers and performers Charlie Higson, Arthur Smith; Paul Whitehouse; explorer Benedict Allen; meteorologist Penny Tranter; actors Jack Davenport, James Frain; Tim Bentinck; and BBC Radio's Jenny Abramsky.

• Staff

  Over 2,200 staff. Approximately 1500 full time and 600 part-time.

• Courses

  A choice of nearly 300 courses ranging from Environmental Sciences to World Art and Museology and from Biological Sciences to Development Studies.

  Over 160 evening and day courses for local residents, including the Award-winning Science Starter programme, offered in locations throughout Norfolk.

• Campus

  Located three miles outside Norwich city centre in 320 acres of parkland.

  Award-winning architecture by Sir Denys Lasdun, Lord Norman Foster and Rick Mather.

  Home to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts housing the stimulating and extensive Sainsbury Collection, combining modern Western works with fine and applied arts from across the globe.

  Multi-million pound Sportspark which includes a 50m competition swimming pool, a climbing wall, fitness centre and a human performance laboratory.

• Partnerships

  A leading member of the Norwich Research Park (NRP), a powerful partnership which includes the John Innes Centre, the Institute of Food Research, the Sainsbury Laboratory and the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust. The NRP has 6,500 staff and over 900 postgraduate research students.

  The UEA also has strong links with the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust and other health providers, with respects to all aspects of bio-medical research involving UEA's Schools of Health, Biological Sciences and Environmental Sciences.

Historical points of interest

• Elizabeth Fry Building

  Elizabeth Fry was born in Norwich on 21 May 1780 and was the third child of wealthy banker and merchant John Gurney. In August 1800 she became the wife of Joseph Fry, a London merchant.

  Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker who became famous for her work to reform the prison system in Britain in the early nineteenth century. She inspired other women to break with tradition and have an expanded role in society. Among the 'plain Quakers' of Goat Lane Meeting in Norwich, it was also unusual for a Quaker to be so prominent. This is because at that time the Quaker movement was going through a 'quietist' phase, and was very inward looking.

• Sir Thomas Browne Suite

  Preeminent Norwich physician of A prominent philosopher and the period, Thomas Browne was born in London on 19th October 1605. Educated at Winchester College and Broadgates Hall (later Pembroke College) Oxford, where he was awarded BA and MA, he also qualified as a physician from Leiden, The Netherlands, after training also at Montpellier and Padua.

  He moved to Norwich in 1637, living in Orford Place just off The Haymarket. He married Dorothy Mileham of North Burlingham, Norfolk, in 1641 and they had 12 children. Browne enjoyed a close association with Norwich Cathedral and the church of St. Peter Mancroft, eventually being buried there in 1682.

  He wrote extensively - among his works are Religio Medici(1643) Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) and Hydriotaphia - Urne Burials (1658). He was knighted by Charles II in 1671 and died in Norwich on his 77th birthday in 1682.

• The Gurney Room

  The Gurney family arrived in Norwich with the Normans and in the 17th Century became Quakers. The family was wealthy, having made their money in the woollen trade. By 1775 the family used the money to invest in a bank. In 1779 another family member had joined the board. He was married to the daughter of another banking family, the Barclays. In time the two banks merged and we were left with Barclay's Bank, which still exists today.

  Having previously lived in Magdalen Street, Norwich, the Gurney family moved in 1785 to Earlham Hall, outside the city. Earlham Hall is now part of the University of East Anglia, housing the School of Law.

• Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental Research (ZICER)

  Solly Zuckerman was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his medical studies in England, and whilst teaching anatomy at University College London pursued research into primate behaviour at London Zoo. His wartime career began in 1939 with experimental studies of concussion and ended with a 'post-mortem' analysis of the Combined Bomber Offensive. In 1943, Zuckerman was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society, and in 1945 he took up the post of Professor of Anatomy at Birmingham University.

  In 1960, Zuckerman was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) to the Ministry of Defence, and from 1965 until his retirement in 1971, he was CSA to successive British governments.

  Zuckerman remained busy after retirement, as President of the Zoological Society of London, as a campaigner against the nuclear arms race, and as a promoter of environmental research.

  In 1969, Zuckerman was appointed Professor at Large at the UEA, a new university of which he had been a founder. He maintained a close association with UEA, and its School of Environmental Sciences in particular, until his death on 1 April 1993.

• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

  Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury donated their collection of world art to the University of East Anglia in 1973, this establising the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which first opened its doors to visitors in 1978. It was the Sainsburys' hope that students, academic staff and the general public would grow to appreciate the works on display in much the same way as the Sainsburys themselves had done, by being able to look frequently and closely at them without the distraction of too much museum-style text and labelling.

  As a young man, Robert Sainsbury collected private press books, later acquiring the objects around which he and his wife built the collection which is now the propert of the University. His first significant purchase was Jacob Epstein's Baby Asleep, bought in 1931 or 1932. Over the next sixty years, he and Lady Sainsbury added works by both established and, perhaps more interestingly, emerging European artists.

  With the advice and encouragement of a handful of dealers, the collection also grew to include objects from cultures around the world spanning more than five thousand years. The Sainsburys particularly enjoyed the friendships which they built with individual artists, among them Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon and, more recently, John Davies, all of whom are well represented in the Collection.

• Ziggurat

  Norfolk and Suffolk residences are refered to as the Ziggurat because of their shape. Ziggurats is the name commonly given to the vaguely pyramid-shaped, stepped structures (ziqqarratu) built in many temple compounds in Mesopotamian cities from c. 2200 BCE until c. 550 BCE. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats were of solid construction (mostly mud brick and bitumen), lacking internal chambers.