The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is one of the foremost social science universities in the world.
It is a specialist university with an international intake and a global reach. Its research and teaching spans the full breadth of the social sciences, from economics, politics and law to sociology, anthropology, accounting and finance and, as the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise found, it has the highest percentage of world-leading research of any university in the UK.
Founded in 1895 by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, LSE has an outstanding reputation for academic excellence. Fourteen Nobel Prize winners in economics, literature and peace have been either LSE staff or alumni: George Bernard Shaw (1925), Ralph Bunche (1950), Bertrand Russell (1950), Philip Noel-Baker (1959), Sir John Hicks (1972), Friedrich von Hayek (1974), James Meade (1977), Arthur Lewis (1979), Merton Miller (1990), Ronald Coase (1991), Amartya Sen (1998), Robert Mundell (1999), George Akerlof (2001) and Leonid Hurwicz (jointly) (2007).
The School has just under 90,000 registered alumni. As of February 2009, around 32 past or present heads of state have studied or taught at LSE, and 28 members of the British House of Commons and 42 members of the House of Lords have either studied or taught at LSE.