
When Imperial College London was founded in 1907, its mission was “to be useful”. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was equally modest, taking the beaver as its mascot in 1914 in recognition of the dam builder’s “engineering and mechanical skill and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal, he does his best work in the dark.”
If one drives west out of London past White City, Imperial is now impossible to miss. The science and technology university’s towering second campus, adding to its original in South Kensington, has attracted a cluster of biotechnology start-ups along with the UK head office of Novartis to a former BBC site. It is very useful to the UK economy in what has been a difficult period.