The Schuster Laboratory (also known as the Schuster Building) houses the Department of Physics and Astronomy, part of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

. It is named after Sir Franz Arthur Friedrich Schuster and is located in Brunswick Park (formerly Brunswick Street) on the main campus of the University. The building was designed by Fairhurst, Harry S. & Sons, of the Fairhurst Design Group, and was completed in 1967. The roof of the largest lecture theatre in the building has an abstract sculpture by Michael Piper on it. In 2007, the existing labs and offices were refurbished. The Schuster Annexe, opened by

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in ...

, was added in 2018.

Architecture

The Schuster Laboratory was built during a time of expansion for the University, with the construction of a new Science Quadrangle. The Schuster Building was one of the later buildings constructed on this Quadrangle. The Electrical Engineering Laboratory, on the south side, was completed by 1954. This was followed by the Simon Engineering Laboratories on the southwest of the quadrangle, finished in mid-1962, and the Chemistry building on the southeast which was completed by October 1964. The Schuster Laboratories had been approved, and planning was nearly completed, by the end of August 1962. The Schuster Annexe was designed by

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and was completed in 2017. It contains additional laboratories and offices, as well as dedicated areas for group work and collaboration.

Facilities

The building houses four large lecture rooms around the foyer on the ground floor, named after people who taught or carried out research in the department: Rutherford, Bragg, Blackett and Moseley. The rooms are centrally allocated by the University, rather than being solely used by the department. Rutherford is the largest of the lecture theatres, holding 258, while Bragg holds 150, Blackett holds 145 and Moseley holds 148. There is also a meeting room on the roof of one of the wings, called the

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Common Room. The building also houses workshop facilities and teaching laboratories. The building was purpose-built for the Department of Physics and Astronomy. It currently contains the following groups: * Biological Physics Group (3rd floor) * Condensed Matter Physics Group (2nd floor) * Nonlinear Dynamics and Liquid Crystal Physics Group (0th floor) * Particle Accelerator Group (6th and 7th floor) * Particle Physics Group (5th and 6th floor) * Nuclear Physics Group (4th floor) * Theoretical Physics Group (7th floor) The building used to house part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics group, as well as the Photon Physics Group, but these were relocated to the

Alan Turing Building The Alan Turing Building, named after the mathematician and founder of computer science Alan Turing, is a building at the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. It houses the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and ...

in September 2007.

References

{{University of Manchester Astronomy in the United Kingdom Buildings at the University of Manchester Buildings and structures completed in 1967 Research institutes in Manchester