IN the year that Southampton became a city, the University of Southampton was celebrating its twelfth year of full university status and entering a period of growth and investment.

Only two years earlier, in 1962, the university had celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding, as the Hartley Institution, by the “Corporation” of Southampton. Over the following decades the university has continued to grow and develop along with the city that created it.

The 1960s saw the launch of the university’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, whose worldleading research over the past five decades has included helping people to hear and reducing aircraft noise. It was also the decade in which electronics researchers at Southampton began work on optical fibres which were to lead to world-changing communication technologies.

The university’s Medical School was founded in the city in 1971 and since then has trained thousands of doctors and scientists and conducted cutting-edge research in areas such as cancer, osteoporosis, asthma and nutrition.

Many local and regional doctors have trained here in the city over the past forty years. The university also trains many of the other health professionals who work locally, including nurses, physiotherapists and podiatrists.

For music lovers, the opening of the Turner Sims concert hall at Highfield in the 1970s was a real bonus. Less than ten years later, Southampton gained an international reputation for contemporary art with the opening of the John Hansard Gallery. For entrepreneurs, the University of Southampton Science Park was a welcome addition to the local landscape in 1984.

The city has been home to some significant inventions over the past half century. The optical fibre amplifier developed at Southampton in the 1980s created the global boom in fibre communications and enables the internet to function.

Fibre lasers developed here are transforming manufacturing worldwide In the ’90s, the University established its unique Auditory Implant Service, which currently supports more than 600 adults and 300 children with auditory implants, and also began the Southampton Women’s Survey, a major health study of local women and their children.

The university’s cross-city unilink bus service was launched in 2001.

Today its buses carry over 4 million passengers annually.

Southampton’s world-leading research expertise and facilities have acted as a magnet for investment in both the city and the region. The largest example would be the relocation of the Lloyd’s Register Global Technology Centre onto its new Boldrewood Innovation Campus.

This £140 million investment in the region brings 400 highly paid highly skilled jobs to the city, which otherwise would have gone abroad.

The university continues to attract companies which are looking to benefit from its research and in some cases relocate, keen to be close to a world leader in fields as diverse as optoelectronics or immunology.

The university has been investing in local people. Since 2010 it has funded nearly 5,000 local school students on visits to the Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium, and its LifeLab at Southampton General Hospital has taught more than 2,300 local pupils about science and health, many of them accompanied by teachers trained at the university.

www.southampton.ac.uk/lifelab.