The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[17] The English chemist John Dalton, together with Manchester businessmen and industrialists, established the Mechanics' Institute to ensure that workers could learn the basic principles of science.

John Owens, a textile merchant, left a bequest of £96,942 in 1846 (around £5.6 million in 2005 prices)[18] to found a college to educate men on non-sectarian lines.

There were many Germans on the staff, including Carl Schorlemmer, Britain's first chair in organic chemistry, and Arthur Schuster, professor of physics.

Manchester has traditionally been strong in the sciences; it is where the nuclear nature of the atom was discovered by Ernest Rutherford, and the world's first electronic stored-program computer was built at the university.

Contributions in other fields such as mathematics were made by Paul Erdős, Horace Lamb and Alan Turing and in philosophy by Samuel Alexander, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alasdair MacIntyre.

The author Anthony Burgess, Pritzker Prize and RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Norman Foster and composer Peter Maxwell Davies all attended, or worked at, Manchester.

The current University of Manchester was officially launched on 1 October 2004 when Queen Elizabeth II bestowed its royal charter.

The University of Manchester is the "single supplier invited to submit a proposal for funding the new £45m institute, £38m of which will be provided by the government" – (EPSRC & Technology Strategy Board).

It was extended along Whitworth Street, towards London Road, between 1927 and 1957 by the architects Bradshaw Gass & Hope, completion being delayed due to the depression in the 1930s and the Second World War.

It has played an important role in the research of quasars, pulsars and gravitational lenses, and in confirming Einstein's theory of General Relativity.

[69] Well-known members of the university's current academic staff include computer scientist Steve Furber, economist Richard Nelson,[70] novelist Jeanette Winterson,[71] and Professor Brian Cox.

[75][76] Manchester has the sixth largest research income of any English university (after Oxford, University College London (UCL), Cambridge, Imperial and King's College London),[77] and has been informally referred to as part of a "golden diamond" of research-intensive UK institutions (adding Manchester to the Oxford–Cambridge–London "Golden Triangle").

In addition, the university is one of the richest in the UK in terms of income and interest from endowments: an estimate in 2008 placed it third, surpassed only by Oxford and Cambridge.

The figures, from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), show that Manchester attracted £24,831,000 of research income in 2016–2017 from UK industry, commerce and public corporations.

[85] The Langworthy Professorship, an endowed chair at the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been historically given to a long line of academic luminaries, including Ernest Rutherford (1907–19), Lawrence Bragg (1919–37), Patrick Blackett (1937–53) and more recently Konstantin Novoselov, all of whom have won the Nobel Prize.

The papyri are in ancient languages and include the oldest extant New Testament document, Rylands Library Papyrus P52, commonly known as the St John Fragment.

In April 2007 the Deansgate site reopened to readers and the public after major improvements and renovations, including the construction of the pitched roof originally intended and a new wing.

The collections include butterflies and carvings from India, birds and bark-cloth from the Pacific, live frogs and ancient pottery from America, fossils and native art from Australia, mammals and ancient Egyptian craftsmanship from Africa, plants, coins and minerals from Europe, art from past civilisations of the Mediterranean, and beetles, armour and archery from Asia.

Due to the society's financial difficulties and on the advice of evolutionary biologist Thomas Huxley, Owens College accepted responsibility for the collections in 1867.

[88] The Whitworth Art Gallery houses collections of internationally known British watercolours, textiles and wallpapers, modern and historic prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture.

Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Luke Georgiou, said: “The ranking tables, despite their limitations, give a consistent picture of The University of Manchester’s excellence in national and global terms.”[103] More students apply to Manchester than to any other university in the country, with 79,925 UCAS main scheme applications for undergraduate courses in 2020.

Ron Hill, Rowena Sweatman, James Hickman, Cyril Holmes and Harry Whittle are former students who have achieved Olympic success.

Every year elite sportsmen and sportswomen are selected for membership of the XXI Club, a society formed in 1932 to promote sporting excellence at the university.

[122] In the eight years up to 2013, Manchester has won the BBC2 quiz programme University Challenge four times, drawing equal with Magdalen College, Oxford, for the highest number of series wins.

Notable people associated with the halls include Friedrich Engels, whose residence is commemorated by a blue plaque on Aberdeen House; the physicist Brian Cox; and Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Some of the best-known scientists are: John Dalton (founder of modern atomic theory), Ernest Rutherford who proved the nuclear nature of the atom whilst working at Manchester, Ludwig Wittgenstein (considered one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century, who studied for a doctorate in engineering), George E. Davis (founder of the discipline of chemical engineering), Alan Turing (a founder of computer science and AI, and notable figure in gay rights history), Marie Stopes (pioneer of birth control and campaigner for women's rights), Bernard Lovell (a pioneer of radio astronomy), Tom Kilburn and Frederic Calland Williams (who developed the Manchester Baby, the world's first stored-program computer at Victoria University of Manchester in 1948), and physicist and television presenter Brian Cox.

Notable politicians and public figures associated with the university include: two current presidents - Michael D Higgins of the Republic of Ireland and Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania - and two current prime ministers - Abdalla Hamdok of Sudan and Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda - as well as several ministers in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

A number of well-known actors have studied at the university, including Benedict Cumberbatch, who most notably portrays Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock Holmes in the TV series Sherlock, as well as playing the role of Manchester's own Alan Turing in the 2014 Oscar-winning biopic The Imitation Game.

The university also educated some of the leading figures of alternative comedy: Ben Elton, Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall.