The Royal Military College of Science (RMCS) was a British postgraduate school, research institution and training provider with origins dating back to 1772.

The college traced its history back to the Military Society of Woolwich, founded by two artillery officers in 1772 'for the theoretical, practical and experimental study of gunnery'.

A full-time Professor of Applied Mathematics was now appointed, as well as visiting lecturers in Chemistry, Metallurgy and Physics and Practical Mechanics, while students were also provided with professional instruction within the Royal Arsenal in the properties of guns, carriages, ammunition and small arms.

[4] After the war, the college was reconstituted and reopened at Shrivenham, Berkshire,[4] although the Rhyl section was renamed the Royal Artillery Mechanical Traction School[5] and moved instead to Bordon, Hampshire in 1945.

[6] The Shrivenham site (then in Berkshire but since 1974 in Oxfordshire) had begun to be used for military training in the late 1930s, after the War Office purchased Beckett Hall, an 1830s country house, together with the surrounding estate.

[7][8] It lies between the villages of Shrivenham and Watchfield in the Vale of White Horse district of south-west Oxfordshire, close to the county border with Wiltshire.

The college also provided for postgraduate studies in such specialist areas as Guided Weapons Systems and Nuclear Science and Technology, and was allowed to develop as a centre for research as well as teaching.