Somervillians

The following is a list of notable people associated with Somerville College, Oxford, including alumni and fellows of the college. This list consists almost entirely of women, due to the fact that Somerville College was one of the first two women's colleges of the University of Oxford, admitting men for the first time in 1994. The college and its alumni have played a very important role in feminism.

Somervillians include prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Dorothy Hodgkin, television personalities Esther Rantzen and Susie Dent, reformer Cornelia Sorabji, writers Marjorie Boulton, Vera Brittain, A. S. Byatt, Susan Cooper, Penelope Fitzgerald, Alan Hollinghurst, Winifred Holtby, Nicole Krauss, Iris Murdoch and Dorothy L. Sayers, politicians Shirley Williams, Margaret Jay and Sam Gyimah, socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell, Princess Bamba Sutherland and her sister, philosophers G. E. M. Anscombe, Patricia Churchland, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley, psychologist Anne Treisman, archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, actress Moon Moon Sen, soprano Emma Kirkby and numerous women's rights activists. It has educated at least 28 dames, 17 heads of Oxford colleges, 11 life peers, 10 MP's, 4 Olympic rowers, 3 of ''The 50 greatest British writers since 1945'', 2 prime ministers, 2 princesses, a queen consort and a Nobel laureate.

image:Margaret Thatcher (1983).jpg, Margaret Thatcher, first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979–1990)
image:Indira Gandhi 1977.jpg, Indira Gandhi, first and only woman Prime Minister of India (1966–1977, 1980–1984) and "Woman of the Millennium"
image:Dorothy Hodgkin Nobel.jpg, Dorothy Hodgkin, the first and only British woman scientist to have been awarded a Nobel Prize

Firsts

Somervillians have achieved a good number of "firsts", internationally, nationally and at Oxford University. The most distinguished are the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher, the first and only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in science Dorothy Hodgkin, and the first woman to lead the world's largest democracy Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India for much of the 1970s. Others include Cornelia Sorabji, first female lawyer in India and first Indian national to study at any British university; Anne Warburton, first female British ambassador; Constance Coltman, Britain's first woman to be an ordained Anglican minister; Shriti Vadera, Baroness Vadera, first woman to head a major British bank and chair the Royal Shakespeare Company; Evelyn Sharp, Baroness Sharp, first female permanent secretary, and Carys Bannister, first female neurosurgeon in the UK.

*Manel Abeysekera, Sri Lanka's first woman diplomat
* Ruth Adler, Scotland's first Amnesty International employee
*Caroline Alexander, first woman to publish a full-length English translation of Homer's Iliad
*Rachel Armitage, first New Zealand woman BA to complete a degree at Oxford
*Margaret Ballinger, first President of the Liberal Party of South Africa
*Carys Bannister, first female neurosurgeon in the United Kingdom
* Farah Bhatti, first British woman of Pakistani origins to be made a cardiac surgeon in the United Kingdom; first Muslim on the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England Women in Surgery Forum
*Susanne Bobzien, first woman to be appointed a tutorial fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford
* Lalage Bown, first organizing secretary of the International Congress of Africanists, first woman to receive the William Pearson Tolley Award from Syracuse University
*Victoria Braithwaite, first person to demonstrate that fish feel pain
*Averil Cameron, first female Warden of Keble College
* Gwendolen M. Carter, first female president of the African Studies Association
* Margaret Casely-Hayford, first female Chancellor of Coventry University, first black woman to be Partner in a City law firm
*Ethel Charles, first woman to be admitted to the Royal Institute of British Architects and, with her sister Bessie, the first woman to study architecture at University College London
*Maude Clarke, first female to join Queen's University Belfast’s academic staff
*Thérèse Coffey, first female MP for Suffolk Coastal
*Susan Cooper, first woman to edit the Oxford undergraduate newspaper ''Cherwell''
*Maria Czaplicka, first woman to receive a Mianowski Scholarship and first female lecturer in anthropology at Oxford
* Ann Dally, first woman to study medicine at St Thomas' Hospital
*Helen Darbishire, first woman to be chair of the faculty board of English at Oxford
* Elsbeth Dimsdale, first woman to receive a college fellowship at the University of Cambridge
*Barbara Freire-Marreco, one of the first two women to gain a Diploma in Anthropology at Oxford
* Geraldine Penrose Fitzgerald, arguably the first Catholic Oxford woman student
* Kathleen Fitzpatrick, first associate professor in Australia outside the natural sciences
*Fiona Freckleton, won Great Britain's first medal in a major World Championship women's rowing event
* Maggie Gee, first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL)
* Jean Ginsburg, first woman to graduate from St Mary's Hospital Medical School
* Rose Graham, first female President of the British Archaeological Association
* Gertrud Herzog-Hauser, first Austrian woman to gain a habilitation at university and Vienna’s first university lecturer in classical languages
*Agnes Headlam-Morley, first woman to be appointed to a chair at Oxford
*Carole Hillenbrand, first non-Muslim to be awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies
*Margaret Hills, first female councillor on Stroud District Council
*Dorothy Hodgkin, also the first woman to receive maternity pay at Oxford and first female Chancellor of the University of Bristol
*Evelyn Irons, first female war correspondent to be decorated with the French Croix de Guerre, first journalist to reach certain WWII war zones and first female Stanhope Medal recipient
* Peggy Jackson, first female Archdeacon of Llandaff
* Diana Josephson, first woman to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and first female Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere
*Kathleen Kenyon, first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society
*Laeticia Kikonyogo, first Ugandan woman to be appointed High Court judge and Chief Magistrate
*Alix Kilroy, one of the first two women to have entered the administrative grade of the Civil Service by examination
*Akua Kuenyehia, first First Vice-president of the ICC and Ghana's first female law professor
* Christine Lee, first female scholar of the Oxford University Medical School
* Nemone Lethbridge, first female at Hare Court and one of Britain's first female barristers
*Leah L'Estrange Malone, first female chair of the Jewish Labour Movement
*Genevieve Lloyd, first female professor of philosophy in Australia
* Hilda Lorimer, one of the first three women to participate in an excavation conducted by the British School at Athens
* Leah Lowenstein, first woman dean of a co-education medical school in the United States
*Margaret Mackworth, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda, first female director of the Institute of Directors
* Dorothea Maude, first woman general practitioner in Oxford
*Michele Moody-Adams, first woman and the first African-American dean at Columbia University.
* Anne Mueller, first female Permanent secretary at HM Treasury
*Isobel Munro, first married Fellow at Oxford
*Hilda D. Oakeley, first Warden of the new Royal Victoria College and first woman to deliver McGill's annual university lecture
*Onora O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, first female winner of the Berggruen Prize
*Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth, the highest ranking female officer of her time in the British intelligence services (the Queen of Spies)
*Inez Pearn, first woman to be awarded the de Osma studentship (for research in Spain) at Oxford
*Emily Penrose, first woman to gain a First in Greats (Classics) at Oxford
*Adelaide Plumptre, first woman elected chair of the Canadian Red Cross