The Wellcome Trust's Journey

Today, the Wellcome Trust is a champion of science, funding research and influencing health policy across the globe. From this perspective of strength and success, it's easy to forget the long path that led here.

Our journey started in 1880, the year in which a youthful Henry Wellcome left the shores of America to start a pharmaceutical business on British soil with fellow American Silas Burroughs. It was Wellcome's unyielding commitment to improving human health through research, and his passion for culture and the arts, that led to the Trust's creation in 1936 and that has inspired those who followed him to make the Trust what it is today.