Wentworth argued that it would provide the opportunity for "the child of every class, to become great and useful in the destinies of his country" and that a state secular university was imperative for a society aspiring towards self-government.

I trust that, from the pregnant womb of this institution will arise a long list of illustrious names—of statesmen—of patriots—of philanthropists—of philosophers—of poets and of heroes, who will shed a deathless halo, not only on their country, but upon the University which called them into being.

This seat in the New South Wales legislature was first filled in 1876, but was abolished in 1880, one year after its second member, Sir Edmund Barton, who later became the first Prime Minister of Australia, was elected to the Legislative Assembly.

[31] A native of Scotland, Anderson's controversial views as a self-proclaimed atheist and advocate of free thought in all subjects raised the ire of many, even to the point of being censured by the state legislature in 1943.

At one stage, newspaper reporters descended on the university to cover brawls, demonstrations, secret memos and a walk-out by David Armstrong, a philosopher who held the Challis Chair of Philosophy from 1959 to 1991, after students at one of his lectures openly demanded a course on feminism.

[35] The Builders Labourers Federation placed a ban on the university after two women tutors were not allowed to teach a course but the issue was quickly resolved internally.

[40] In 2003, Nick Greiner, a former Premier of New South Wales, resigned from his position as chair of the university's Graduate School of Management because of academic protests against his simultaneous chairmanship of British American Tobacco (Australia).

Subsequently, his wife, Kathryn Greiner, resigned in protest from the two positions she held at the university as chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation and a member of the executive council of the Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific.

The painting, Jeune Fille Endormie, which had not been publicly seen since 1939, depicts the artist's lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter and was donated on the strict understanding that it would be sold and the proceeds directed to medical research.

The proceeds of the sale funded the establishment of many endowed professorial chairs at the Charles Perkins Centre, where a room dedicated to the painting, now exists.

[49] Action initiated by then-Vice Chancellor Michael Spence to improve the financial sustainability of the university caused controversy among some students and staff.

[50] In 2012, Spence led efforts to cut the university's expenditure to address the financial impact of a slowdown in international student enrolments across Australia.

[51] Critics argued the push for savings was driven by managerial incompetence and indifference, fuelling industrial action during a round of enterprise bargaining in 2013 that also reflected widespread concerns about public funding for higher education.

An exposé by Fairfax which turned out to be based on a misunderstanding as to VET and UAC matriculation standards, the scheme has been criticised by Phillip Heath, the national chairman of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia.

[57] Throughout 2014, Spence took a leading position among Australian vice-chancellors in repeatedly calling for any change to funding to not undermine equitable access to university while arguing for fee deregulation to raise course costs for the majority of higher education students.

[70][71] Originally housed in what is now Sydney Grammar School, in 1855 the government granted land in Grose Farm to the university, three kilometres from the city, which is now the main Camperdown campus.

These buildings house a large proportion of the university's catering outlets, and provide space for recreational rooms, bars and function centres.

[75] As of 2016, the university is undertaking a large capital works program with the aim of revitalising the campus and providing more office, teaching and student space.

The new home for the Sydney Law School, located alongside Fisher Library on the site of the old Edgeworth David and Stephen Roberts buildings, has been completed.

[122] These surveys place more emphasis on criteria such as student experience, graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction[122] than perceived reputation, research output and citation counts.

[128] The orations have been delivered by prominent First Nations people, including Linda Burney, Pat Anderson, Daniel Browning, Mick Gooda and Ken Wyatt.

[129] The Oration includes the Charles Perkins Memorial Prize, which recognises the achievements of the top three Indigenous students at the university, based on the highest academic results in their field.

The School of Physics has played an important role in the development of radio astronomy in particular:[132] Ruby Payne-Scott conducted the first interferometric observations in radio astronomy with the sea-cliff interferometer at Dover Heights; alumnus Ron Bracewell proposed the nulling interferometer to image extrasolar planets, made contributions to the theory of the Fourier Transform and X-ray tomography, and proposed the idea of the Bracewell probe in SETI; and alumnus Bernard Mills led the construction of the Mills Cross Telescope and Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope in the ACT.

School of Physics alumnus and Crafoord Laureate Edwin Salpeter discovered the form of the initial mass function of stars, the importance of beryllium-8 in stellar nuclear fusion, and independently with Yakov Zel'dovich proposed the black hole accretion disk model of active galactic nuclei.

Chaos theory pioneer and Crafoord Laureate Robert May is an alumnus of and former professor at the School of Physics, best known for his exploration of the logistic map bifurcations.

In the performing arts, notable alumni include soprano Joan Sutherland; Shakespearean actor John Bell, producer and director Dolph Lundgren; and Bahraini–Sri Lankan actress Jacqueline Fernandez.

In international politics, notable alumni include former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav and premier of British Columbia, John Horgan.

In community activism, notable alumni include Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins; feminists Eva Cox and Germaine Greer.

Imogen Grant from the SRC said students who had experienced sexual assault had come forward believing that "navigating the university bureaucracy exacerbates trauma and often seems futile".

[147] In April 2022, the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales fined the University of Sydney $61,000 for disposing a broken positron emission tomography scanner with a radioactive source inside at a scrap metal yard.