The History of the Royal School of Mines

A corporate finance analyst for Midwestern Oil & Gas Co. Ltd. in Nigeria, Edesiri Onatejiroghene Ibru has been working in the petroleum industry for more than 10 years. The daughter of Chief Michael Ibru, a prominent entrepreneur in Nigeria, Edesiri Onatejiroghene Ibru studied at Imperial College London and is an associate of that institution’s Royal School of Mines (RSM).

The geologist Sir Henry De La Beche established the RSM in 1851. Over the course of 50 years, the institution became well known for educating students about petroleum geology, mining, geology, and metallurgy and eventually merged with the Royal College of Science and City & Guilds College in 1907. This merger brought about the Imperial College of Science and Technology, an institution that continued RSM’s reputation for high-quality education.

By 1950, the RSM and Imperial College had become known around the world as one of the top institutions for studying technology and science. The RSM began publishing an annual journal in 1986 to promote geology and mining research and the institution continued thriving through 1989.

Unfortunately, the school’s golden age came to a halt in the 1990s. Due to the incorporation of St. Mary’s Medical College and the formation of the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine and the T.H. Huxley School of Life and Earth Science, the RSM started breaking up. Imperial College began disbanding old founding colleges in 2000, and the RSM was no longer named as a part of the institution.

The RSM Union (RSMU), a student union for the school, continued fighting for the college throughout the early 2000s. Although the RSM no longer belongs to an academic entity, it continues to live on through the students and the RSMU.