University of Liverpool

Not only is Liverpool one of the original six "redbrick" universities, it was also a Liverpool professor, Edgar Allison Peers, who coined the term. Another of its professors, Oliver Lodge, made what was arguably the world's first public radio transmission in 1894, a year before Marconi. Home to around 20,700 students, it counts journalist Jon Snow and writer Lytton Strachey among its graduates.