Annie Besant left a mark on Birkbeck in the late nineteenth century because the college discriminated against her on the grounds of her radical social politics. Besant had published The Gospel of Atheism in which she said that “ignorance … imagined the supernatural, and knowledge would bring all things within the reason of common sense”.

She was a leading advocate of birth control, a revolutionary idea for the time that made her a target for the authorities: she lost custody of her two children. The Birkbeck Committee, when it learned of who she was, failed to send her a “notice of the public distribution of certificates” and removed her name from their list of successful students. She protested vehemently and, with the backing of the Students’ Union, she won her case for having her name printed in the next syllabus “with an explanation as to its being an omission”.