, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor = The Lord Patten of Barnes
, vice_chancellor =
Louise Richardson
Dame Louise Mary Richardson (born 8 June 1958 ) is an Irish political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. In January 2016 she became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, having formerly served as the Principa ...
, students = 24,515 (2019)
, undergrad = 11,955
, postgrad = 12,010
, other = 541 (2017)
, city = Oxford
, country = England
, coordinates =
, campus_type = University town
, athletics_affiliations = Blue (university sport)
, logo_size = 250px
, website =
, logo = University of Oxford.svg
, colours = Oxford Blue
, faculty = 6,995 (2020)
, academic_affiliations = ,
The University of Oxford is a collegiateresearch university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English
ancient universities
The ancient universities are British and Irish medieval universities and early modern universities founded before the year 1600. Four of these are located in Scotland, two in England, and one in Ireland. The ancient universities in Britain and I ...
share many common features and are jointly referred to as '' Oxbridge''. Both are ranked among the most prestigious universities in the world.
The university is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, five
permanent private hall
A permanent private hall (PPH) in the University of Oxford is an educational institution within the university. There are five permanent private halls at Oxford, four of which admit undergraduates. They were founded by different Christian denomina ...
s, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. It does not have a main campus, and its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre.
Undergraduate teaching
Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-lev ...
at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group
tutorials
A tutorial, in education, is a method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture, a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete ...
at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided predominantly centrally.
Oxford operates the world's oldest university museum, as well as the largest
university press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. Most are nonprofit organizations and an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by schola ...
in the world and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the university had a total income of £2.45 billion, of which £624.8 million was from research grants and contracts.
Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30
prime ministers of the United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the principal minister of the crown of His Majesty's Government, and the head of the British Cabinet. There is no specific date for when the office of prime minister first appeared, as the role was n ...
and many heads of state and government around the world. 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have studied, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160
Olympic medal
An Olympic medal is awarded to successful competitors at one of the Olympic Games. There are three classes of medal to be won: gold, silver, and bronze, awarded to first, second, and third place, respectively. The granting of awards is laid o ...
s. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes.
History
Founding
The University of Oxford's foundation date is unknown. It is known that teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when the university came into being. The scholar Theobald of Étampes lectured at Oxford in the early 1100s.
It grew quickly from 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris. The historian
Gerald of Wales
Gerald of Wales ( la, Giraldus Cambrensis; cy, Gerallt Gymro; french: Gerald de Barri; ) was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taugh ...
lectured to such scholars in 1188, and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, and the masters were recognised as a ''universitas'' or corporation in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III.
After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge, later forming the University of Cambridge.
The students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two '
nations
A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by t ...
', representing the North (''northerners'' or ''Boreales'', who included the English people from north of the River Trent and the Scots) and the South (''southerners'' or ''Australes'', who included English people from south of the Trent, the Irish and the Welsh). In later centuries, geographical origins continued to influence many students' affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. In addition, members of many religious orders, including Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites and Augustinians, settled in Oxford in the mid-13th century, gained influence and maintained houses or halls for students.Christopher Brooke, Roger Highfield. Oxford and Cambridge. At about the same time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, and John Balliol, father of a future King of Scots;
Balliol College
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
bears his name. Another founder,
Walter de Merton
Walter de Merton ( – 27 October 1277) was Lord Chancellor of England, Archdeacon of Bath, founder of Merton College, Oxford, and Bishop of Rochester. For the first two years of the reign of Edward I he was - in all but name - Regent of England d ...
, a Lord Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, devised a series of regulations for college life; Merton College thereby became the model for such establishments at Oxford, as well as at the University of Cambridge. Thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses.
In 1333–1334, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire, was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III. Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England, even in London; thus, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, which was unusual in large western European countries.
Renaissance period
The new learning of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
greatly influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were
William Grocyn
William Grocyn ( 14461519) was an English scholar, a friend of Erasmus.
Life
Grocyn was born at Colerne, Wiltshire. Intended by his parents for the church, he was sent to Winchester College, and in 1465 was elected to a scholarship at New Colleg ...
recusant
Recusancy (from la, recusare, translation=to refuse) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation.
The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign ...
scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling especially at the
University of Douai
The University of Douai (french: Université de Douai) ( nl, Universiteit van Dowaai) is a former university in Douai, France. With a medieval heritage of scholarly activities in Douai, the university was established in 1559 and lectures started ...
. The method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. As a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxford's reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment; enrolments fell and teaching was neglected.
In 1636,
William Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...
, the chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its governing regulations until the mid-19th century. Laud was also responsible for the granting of a charter securing privileges for the
University Press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. Most are nonprofit organizations and an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by schola ...
, and he made significant contributions to the Bodleian Library, the main library of the university. From the beginnings of the Church of England as the established church until 1866, membership of the church was a requirement to receive the BA degree from the university and " dissenters" were only permitted to receive the MA in 1871.
The university was a centre of the Royalist party during the English Civil War (1642–1649), while the town favoured the opposing Parliamentarian cause. From the mid-18th century onwards, however, the university took little part in political conflicts.
Wadham College
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
, founded in 1610, was the undergraduate college of Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was part of a brilliant group of experimental scientists at Oxford in the 1650s, the Oxford Philosophical Club, which included Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. This group held regular meetings at Wadham under the guidance of the college's Warden, John Wilkins, and the group formed the nucleus that went on to found the Royal Society.
Modern period
Students
Before reforms in the early 19th century, the curriculum at Oxford was notoriously narrow and impractical.
Sir Spencer Walpole
Sir Spencer Walpole KCB, FBA (6 February 1839 – 7 July 1907) was an English historian and civil servant.
Background
He came of the younger branch of the ''de facto'' first prime minister, Robert Walpole who revived the Whig Party, bei ...
, a historian of contemporary Britain and a senior government official, had not attended any university. He said, "Few medical men, few solicitors, few persons intended for commerce or trade, ever dreamed of passing through a university career." He quoted the Oxford University Commissioners in 1852 stating: "The education imparted at Oxford was not such as to conduce to the advancement in life of many persons, except those intended for the ministry." Nevertheless, Walpole argued:
Out of the students who matriculated in 1840, 65% were sons of professionals (34% were Anglican ministers). After graduation, 87% became professionals (59% as Anglican clergy). Out of the students who matriculated in 1870, 59% were sons of professionals (25% were Anglican ministers). After graduation, 87% became professionals (42% as Anglican clergy).
M. C. Curthoys and H. S. Jones argue that the rise of organised sport was one of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the history of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was carried over from the athleticism prevalent at the public schools such as Eton, Winchester, Shrewsbury, and Harrow.
All students, regardless of their chosen area of study, were required to spend (at least) their first year preparing for a first-year examination that was heavily focused on classical languages. Science students found this particularly burdensome and supported a separate science degree with Greek language study removed from their required courses. This concept of a Bachelor of Science had been adopted at other European universities ( London University had implemented it in 1860) but an 1880 proposal at Oxford to replace the classical requirement with a modern language (like German or French) was unsuccessful. After considerable internal wrangling over the structure of the arts curriculum, in 1886 the "natural science preliminary" was recognized as a qualifying part of the first year examination.
At the start of 1914, the university housed about 3,000 undergraduates and about 100 postgraduate students. During the First World War, many undergraduates and fellows joined the armed forces. By 1918 virtually all fellows were in uniform, and the student population in residence was reduced to 12 per cent of the pre-war total. The University Roll of Service records that, in total, 14,792 members of the university served in the war, with 2,716 (18.36%) killed. Not all the members of the university who served in the Great War were on the Allied side; there is a remarkable memorial to members of New College who served in the German armed forces, bearing the inscription, 'In memory of the men of this college who coming from a foreign land entered into the inheritance of this place and returning fought and died for their country in the war 1914–1918'. During the war years the university buildings became hospitals, cadet schools and military training camps.
Reforms
Two parliamentary commissions in 1852 issued recommendations for Oxford and Cambridge.
Archibald Campbell Tait
Archibald Campbell Tait (21 December 18113 December 1882) was an Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England and theologian. He was the first Scottish Archbishop of Canterbury and thus, head of the Church of England.
Life
Tait was bo ...
, former headmaster of Rugby School, was a key member of the Oxford Commission; he wanted Oxford to follow the German and Scottish model in which the professorship was paramount. The commission's report envisioned a centralised university run predominantly by professors and faculties, with a much stronger emphasis on research. The professional staff should be strengthened and better paid. For students, restrictions on entry should be dropped, and more opportunities given to poorer families. It called for an enlargement of the curriculum, with honours to be awarded in many new fields. Undergraduate scholarships should be open to all Britons. Graduate fellowships should be opened up to all members of the university. It recommended that fellows be released from an obligation for ordination. Students were to be allowed to save money by boarding in the city, instead of in a college.
The system of separate honour schools for different subjects began in 1802, with Mathematics and Literae Humaniores. Schools of "Natural Sciences" and "Law, and Modern History" were added in 1853. By 1872, the last of these had split into "Jurisprudence" and "Modern History". Theology became the sixth honour school. In addition to these B.A. Honours degrees, the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.) was, and still is, offered.
The mid-19th century saw the impact of the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), led among others by the future Cardinal John Henry Newman. The influence of the reformed model of German universities reached Oxford via key scholars such as
Edward Bouverie Pusey
Edward Bouverie Pusey (; 22 August 180016 September 1882) was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement.
Early years
...
,
Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett (, modern variant ; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was an English tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian, an Anglican cleric, and a translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of B ...
and Max Müller.
Administrative reforms during the 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with written entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent, and the establishment of four women's colleges. Privy Council decisions in the 20th century (e.g. the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of colleges' theological bequests to other purposes) loosened the link with traditional belief and practice. Furthermore, although the university's emphasis had historically been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded during the 19th century to include scientific and medical studies. Knowledge of Ancient Greek was required for admission until 1920, and Latin until 1960.
The University of Oxford began to award doctorates for research in the first third of the 20th century. The first Oxford DPhil in mathematics was awarded in 1921.
The mid-20th century saw many distinguished continental scholars, displaced by Nazism and communism, relocating to Oxford.
The list of distinguished scholars at the University of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. As of October 2022, 73 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leaders have been affiliated with the University of Oxford.
Women's education
The university passed a statute in 1875 allowing examinations for women at roughly undergraduate level; for a brief period in the early 1900s, this allowed the "
steamboat ladies
"Steamboat ladies" was a nickname given to a number of female students at the women's colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge who were awarded ''ad eundem'' University of Dublin degrees at Trinity College Dublin, between 1904 and 19 ...
" to receive '' ad eundem'' degrees from the University of Dublin. In June 1878, the '' Association for the Education of Women'' (AEW) was formed, aiming for the eventual creation of a college for women in Oxford. Some of the more prominent members of the association were
George Granville Bradley
George Granville Bradley (11 December 1821 – 13 March 1903) was an English divine, scholar, and schoolteacher, who was Dean of Westminster (1881–1902).
Life
George Bradley's father, Charles Bradley, was vicar of Glasbury, Brecon, mid Wales ...
, T. H. Green and Edward Stuart Talbot. Talbot insisted on a specifically Anglican institution, which was unacceptable to most of the other members. The two parties eventually split, and Talbot's group founded Lady Margaret Hall in 1878, while T. H. Green founded the non-denominational
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
in 1879. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened their doors to their first 21 students (12 from Somerville, 9 from Lady Margaret Hall) in 1879, who attended lectures in rooms above an Oxford baker's shop. There were also 25 women students living at home or with friends in 1879, a group which evolved into the Society of Oxford Home-Students and in 1952 into St Anne's College.
These first three societies for women were followed by St Hugh's (1886) and St Hilda's (1893). All of these colleges later became coeducational, starting with Lady Margaret Hall and St Anne's in 1979, and finishing with St Hilda's, which began to accept male students in 2008. In the early 20th century, Oxford and Cambridge were widely perceived to be bastions of male privilege, however the integration of women into Oxford moved forward during the First World War. In 1916 women were admitted as medical students on a par with men, and in 1917 the university accepted financial responsibility for women's examinations.
On 7 October 1920 women became eligible for admission as full members of the university and were given the right to take degrees. In 1927 the university's dons created a quota that limited the number of female students to a quarter that of men, a ruling which was not abolished until 1957. However, during this period Oxford colleges were
single sex
In biology, gonochorism is a sexual system where there are only two sexes and each individual organism is either male or female. The term gonochorism is usually applied in animal species, the vast majority of which are gonochoric.
Gonochorism c ...
, so the number of women was also limited by the capacity of the women's colleges to admit students. It was not until 1959 that the women's colleges were given full collegiate status.
In 1974, Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford and St Catherine's became the first previously all-male colleges to admit women. The majority of men's colleges accepted their first female students in 1979, with Christ Church following in 1980, and Oriel becoming the last men's college to admit women in 1985. Most of Oxford's graduate colleges were founded as coeducational establishments in the 20th century, with the exception of St Antony's, which was founded as a men's college in 1950 and began to accept women only in 1962. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female; in 2016, 45% of the student population, and 47% of undergraduate students, were female.
In June 2017, Oxford announced that starting the following academic year, history students may choose to sit a take-home exam in some courses, with the intention that this will equalise rates of firsts awarded to women and men at Oxford. That same summer, maths and computer science tests were extended by 15 minutes, in a bid to see if female student scores would improve.
The detective novel ''
Gaudy Night
''Gaudy Night'' (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
The dons of Harriet Vane's '' alma mater'', the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on S ...
'' by Dorothy L. Sayers, herself one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, is largely set in the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Sayers' own
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
), and the issue of women's education is central to its plot. Social historian and Somerville College alumna Jane Robinson's book ''Bluestockings: A Remarkable History of the First Women to Fight for an Education'' gives a very detailed and immersive account of this history.
Buildings and sites
Map
Main sites
The university is a "city university" in that it does not have a main campus; instead, colleges, departments, accommodation, and other facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. The Science Area, in which most science departments are located, is the area that bears closest resemblance to a campus. The ten-acre (4-hectare) Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in the northwest of the city is currently under development. However, the larger colleges' sites are of similar size to these areas.
Iconic university buildings include the Radcliffe Camera, the
Sheldonian Theatre
Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1669 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford. The building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, chancellor of the University at the time and the project's ...
used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and the
Examination Schools
The Examination Schools of the University of Oxford are located at 75–81 High Street, Oxford, England. The building was designed by Sir Thomas Jackson (1835–1924), who also designed several other University buildings, such as much of Brasen ...
, where examinations and some lectures take place. The
University Church of St Mary the Virgin
The University Church of St Mary the Virgin (St Mary's or SMV for short) is an Oxford church situated on the north side of the High Street. It is the centre from which the University of Oxford grew and its parish consists almost exclusively of u ...
was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian. Christ Church Cathedral uniquely serves as both a college chapel and as a cathedral.
In 2012–2013, the university built the controversial one-hectare (400 m × 25 m) Castle Mill development of 4–5-storey blocks of student flats overlooking Cripley Meadow and the historic
Port Meadow
Port Meadow is a large meadow of open common land beside the River Thames to the north and west of Oxford, England.
Overview
The meadow is an ancient area of grazing land, still used for horses and cattle, and according to legend has never bee ...
, blocking views of the spires in the city centre. The development has been likened to building a "skyscraper beside Stonehenge".
Parks
The
University Parks
The Oxford University Parks, commonly referred to locally as the University Parks, or just The Parks, is a large parkland area slightly northeast of the city centre in Oxford, England. The park is bounded to the east by the River Cherwell, thou ...
are a 70-acre (28 ha) parkland area in the northeast of the city, near
Keble College
Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to ...
,
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
and Lady Margaret Hall. It is open to the public during daylight hours. As well as providing gardens and exotic plants, the Parks contains numerous sports fields, used for official and unofficial fixtures, and also contains sites of special interest including the Genetic Garden, an experimental garden to elucidate and investigate evolutionary processes.
The Botanic Garden on the
High Street
High Street is a common street name for the primary business street of a city, town, or village, especially in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. It implies that it is the focal point for business, especially shopping. It is also a metonym fo ...
is the oldest botanic garden in the UK. It contains over 8,000 different plant species on . It is one of the most diverse yet compact major collections of plants in the world and includes representatives of over 90% of the higher plant families. The Harcourt Arboretum is a site six miles (10 km) south of the city that includes native woodland and of meadow. The Wytham Woods are owned by the university and used for research in zoology and climate change.
There are also various collegiate-owned open spaces open to the public, including Bagley Wood and most notably Christ Church Meadow.
Organisation
As a
collegiate university
A collegiate university is a university in which functions are divided between a central administration and a number of constituent colleges. Historically, the first collegiate university was the University of Paris and its first college was the C ...
, Oxford is structured as a federation, comprising over forty self-governing colleges and halls, along with a central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor.
Academic departments are located centrally within the structure of the federation; they are not affiliated with any particular college. Departments provide facilities for teaching and research, determine the syllabi and guidelines for the teaching of students, perform research, and deliver lectures and seminars.
Colleges arrange the tutorial teaching for their undergraduates, and the members of an academic department are spread around many colleges. Though certain colleges do have subject alignments (e.g., Nuffield College as a centre for the social sciences), these are exceptions, and most colleges will have a broad mix of academics and students from a diverse range of subjects. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the central university (the
Bodleian
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...
), by the departments (individual departmental libraries, such as the English Faculty Library), and by colleges (each of which maintains a multi-discipline library for the use of its members).
Central governance
The university's formal head is the Chancellor, currently Lord Patten of Barnes, though as at most British universities, the Chancellor is a titular figure and is not involved with the day-to-day running of the university. The Chancellor is elected by the members of Convocation, a body comprising all graduates of the university, and holds office until death.
The Vice-Chancellor, currently
Louise Richardson
Dame Louise Mary Richardson (born 8 June 1958 ) is an Irish political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. In January 2016 she became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, having formerly served as the Principa ...
, is the ''de facto'' head of the university. Five pro-vice-chancellors have specific responsibilities for education; research; planning and resources; development and external affairs; and personnel and equal opportunities. The University Council is the executive policy-forming body, which consists of the vice-chancellor as well as heads of departments and other members elected by Congregation, in addition to observers from the students' union. Congregation, the "parliament of the dons", comprises over 3,700 members of the university's academic and administrative staff, and has ultimate responsibility for legislative matters: it discusses and pronounces on policies proposed by the University Council.
Two university
proctors
Proctor's Theatre (officially stylized as Proctors since 2007; however, the marquee retains the apostrophe) is a theatre and former vaudeville house located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Many famous artists have performed there, notably ...
, elected annually on a rotating basis from two of the colleges, are the internal ombudsmen who make sure that the university and its members adhere to its statutes. This role incorporates student discipline and complaints, as well as oversight of the university's proceedings. The university's professors are collectively referred to as the
Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs the legal entities of a city, state, or country by way of consent. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. Statutes are rules made by le ...
. They are particularly influential in the running of the university's graduate programmes. Examples of statutory professors are the
Chichele Professorship
The Chichele Professorships are statutory professorships at the University of Oxford named in honour of Henry Chichele (also spelt Chicheley or Checheley, although the spelling of the academic position is consistently "Chichele"), an Archbishop of ...
s and the Drummond Professor of Political Economy. The various academic faculties, departments, and institutes are organised into four divisions, each with its own head and elected board. They are the Humanities Division; the Social Sciences Division; the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division; and the Medical Sciences Division.
The University of Oxford is a "public university" in the sense that it receives some public money from the government, but it is a "private university" in the sense that it is entirely self-governing and, in theory, could choose to become entirely private by rejecting public funds.
Colleges
To be a member of the university, all students, and most academic staff, must also be a member of a college or hall. There are thirty-nine colleges of the University of Oxford and five
permanent private hall
A permanent private hall (PPH) in the University of Oxford is an educational institution within the university. There are five permanent private halls at Oxford, four of which admit undergraduates. They were founded by different Christian denomina ...
s (PPHs), each controlling its membership and with its own internal structure and activities. Not all colleges offer all courses, but they generally cover a broad range of subjects.
The colleges are:
The permanent private halls were founded by different Christian denominations. One difference between a college and a PPH is that whereas colleges are governed by the fellows of the college, the governance of a PPH resides, at least in part, with the corresponding Christian denomination. The five current PPHs are:
The PPHs and colleges join as the Conference of Colleges, which represents the common concerns of the several colleges of the university, to discuss matters of shared interest and to act collectively when necessary, such as in dealings with the central university. The Conference of Colleges was established as a recommendation of the Franks Commission in 1965.
Teaching members of the colleges (i.e. fellows and tutors) are collectively and familiarly known as dons, although the term is rarely used by the university itself. In addition to residential and dining facilities, the colleges provide social, cultural, and recreational activities for their members. Colleges have responsibility for admitting undergraduates and organising their tuition; for graduates, this responsibility falls upon the departments. There is no common title for the heads of colleges: the titles used include Warden, Provost, Principal, President, Rector, Master and Dean.
Finances
In 2017–18, the university had an income of £2,237m; key sources were research grants (£579.1m) and academic fees (£332.5m). The colleges had a total income of £492.9m.
While the university has a larger annual income and operating budget, the colleges have a larger aggregate endowment: over £4.9bn compared to the university's £1.2bn. The central University's endowment, along with some of the colleges', is managed by the university's wholly-owned endowment management office, Oxford University Endowment Management, formed in 2007. The university used to maintain substantial investments in fossil fuel companies. However, in April 2020, the university committed to divest from direct investments in fossil fuel companies and to require indirect investments in fossil fuel companies be subjected to the Oxford Martin Principles.
The total assets of the colleges of £6.3 billion also exceed total university assets of £4.1 billion. The college figure does not reflect all the assets held by the colleges as their accounts do not include the cost or value of many of their main sites or heritage assets such as works of art or libraries.
The university was one of the first in the UK to raise money through a major public fundraising campaign, the Campaign for Oxford. The current campaign, its second, was launched in May 2008 and is entitled "Oxford Thinking – The Campaign for the University of Oxford". This is looking to support three areas: academic posts and programmes, student support, and buildings and infrastructure; having passed its original target of £1.25 billion in March 2012, the target was raised to £3 billion. The campaign had raised a total of £2.8 billion by July 2018.
Funding criticisms
The university has faced criticism for some of its sources of donations and funding. In 2017, attention was drawn to historical donations including All Souls College receiving £10,000 from slave trader
Christopher Codrington
Christopher Codrington (1668 – 7 April 1710) was a Barbadian-born colonial administrator, planter, book collector and military officer. He is sometimes known as Christopher Codrington the Younger to distinguish him from his father.
Codrington ...
in 1710, and Oriel College having receiving taken £100,000 from the will of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes in 1902. In 1996 a donation of £20 million was received from Wafic Saïd who was involved in the Al-Yammah arms deal, and taking £150 million from the US billionaire businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman in 2019. The university has defended its decisions saying it "takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration."
The university has also faced criticism, as noted above, over its decision to accept donations from fossil fuel companies having received £21.8 million from the fossil fuel industry between 2010 and 2015 and £18.8 million between 2015 and 2020.
The university accepted £6 million from The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust in 2021. Former racing driver
Max Mosley
Max Rufus Mosley (13 April 1940 – 23 May 2021) was a British racing driver, lawyer, and president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), a non-profit association which represents the interests of motoring organisations and ...
claims to have set up the trust "to house the fortune he inherited" from his father, Oswald Mosley who was founder of two far right groups
Union Movement
The Union Movement (UM) was a far-right political party founded in the United Kingdom by Oswald Mosley. Before the Second World War, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had wanted to concentrate trade within the British Empire, but the Uni ...
International Alliance of Research Universities
The International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) was launched on 14 January 2006 as a co-operative network of 10 leading, international research-intensive universities who share similar visions for higher education, in particular the edu ...
. It is also a core member of the Europaeum and forms part of the " golden triangle" of highly research intensive and elite English universities.
Academic profile
Admission
In common with most British universities, prospective students apply through the UCAS application system, but prospective applicants for the University of Oxford, along with those for medicine, dentistry, and University of Cambridge applicants, must observe an earlier deadline of 15 October. The
Sutton Trust
The Sutton Trust is an educational charity in the United Kingdom which aims to improve social mobility and address educational disadvantage. The charity was set up by educational philanthropist, Sir Peter Lampl in 1997.
Since then, it has unde ...
maintains that Oxford University and Cambridge University recruit disproportionately from 8 schools which accounted for 1,310 Oxbridge places during three years, contrasted with 1,220 from 2,900 other schools.
To allow a more personalised judgement of students, who might otherwise apply for both, undergraduate applicants are not permitted to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge in the same year. The only exceptions are applicants for
organ scholar
An organ scholar is a young musician employed as a part-time assistant organist at a cathedral, church or institution where regular choral services are held. The idea of an organ scholarship is to provide the holder with playing, directing and adm ...
ships and those applying to read for a second undergraduate degree.
Oxford has the lowest offer rate of all Russell Group universities.
Most applicants choose to apply to one of the individual colleges, which work with each other to ensure that the best students gain a place somewhere at the university regardless of their college preferences. Shortlisting is based on achieved and predicted exam results, school references, and, in some subjects, written admission tests or candidate-submitted written work. Approximately 60% of applicants are shortlisted, although this varies by subject. If a large number of shortlisted applicants for a subject choose one college, then students who named that college may be reallocated randomly to under-subscribed colleges for the subject. The colleges then invite shortlisted candidates for interview, where they are provided with food and accommodation for around three days in December. Most applicants will be individually interviewed by academics at more than one college. Students from outside Europe can be interviewed remotely, for example, over the Internet.
Offers are sent out in early January, with each offer usually being from a specific college. One in four successful candidates receives an offer from a college that they did not apply to. Some courses may make "open offers" to some candidates, who are not assigned to a particular college until A Level results day in August.
The university has come under criticism for the number of students it accepts from private schools; for instance, Laura Spence's rejection from the university in 2000 led to widespread debate. In 2016, the University of Oxford gave 59% of offers to UK students to students from state schools, while about 93% of all UK pupils and 86% of post-16 UK pupils are educated in state schools. However, 64% of UK applicants were from state schools and the university notes that state school students apply disproportionately to oversubscribed subjects. The proportion of students coming from state schools has been increasing. From 2015 to 2019, the state proportion of total UK students admitted each year was: 55.6%, 58.0%, 58.2%, 60.5% and 62.3%. Oxford University spends over £6 million per year on outreach programs to encourage applicants from underrepresented demographics.
In 2018 the university's annual admissions report revealed that eight of Oxford's colleges had accepted fewer than three black applicants in the past three years. Labour MP David Lammy said, "This is social apartheid and it is utterly unrepresentative of life in modern Britain." In 2020, Oxford had increased its proportion of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students to record levels. The number of BAME undergraduates accepted to the university in 2020 rose to 684 students, or 23.6% of the UK intake, up from 558 or 22% in 2019; the number of Black students was 106 (3.7% of the intake), up from 80 students (3.2%). UCAS data also showed that Oxford is more likely than comparable institutions to make offers to ethnic minority and socially disadvantaged pupils.
Teaching and degrees
Undergraduate teaching is centred on the tutorial, where 1–4 students spend an hour with an academic discussing their week's work, usually an essay (humanities, most social sciences, some mathematical, physical, and life sciences) or problem sheet (most mathematical, physical, and life sciences, and some social sciences). The university itself is responsible for conducting examinations and conferring degrees. Undergraduate teaching takes place during three eight-week academic terms: Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity. (These are officially known as 'Full Term': 'Term' is a lengthier period with little practical significance.) Internally, the weeks in a term begin on Sundays, and are referred to numerically, with the initial week known as "first week", the last as "eighth week" and with the numbering extended to refer to weeks before and after term (for example "noughth week" precedes term). Undergraduates must be in residence from Thursday of 0th week. These teaching terms are shorter than those of most other British universities, and their total duration amounts to less than half the year. However, undergraduates are also expected to do some academic work during the three holidays (known as the Christmas, Easter, and Long Vacations).
Research degrees at the master's and doctoral level are conferred in all subjects studied at graduate level at the university.
Scholarships and financial support
There are many opportunities for students at Oxford to receive financial help during their studies. The Oxford Opportunity Bursaries, introduced in 2006, are university-wide means-based bursaries available to any British undergraduate, with a total possible grant of £10,235 over a 3-year degree. In addition, individual colleges also offer bursaries and funds to help their students. For graduate study, there are many scholarships attached to the university, available to students from all sorts of backgrounds, from Rhodes Scholarships to the relatively new Weidenfeld Scholarships. Oxford also offers the Clarendon Scholarship which is open to graduate applicants of all nationalities. The Clarendon Scholarship is principally funded by Oxford University Press in association with colleges and other partnership awards. In 2016, Oxford University announced that it is to run its first free online economics course as part of a "
massive open online course
A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, man ...
" (Mooc) scheme, in partnership with a US online university network. The course available is called 'From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development'.
Students successful in early examinations are rewarded by their colleges with scholarships and exhibitions, normally the result of a long-standing endowment, although since the introduction of tuition fees the amounts of money available are purely nominal. Scholars, and exhibitioners in some colleges, are entitled to wear a more voluminous undergraduate gown; "commoners" (originally those who had to pay for their "commons", or food and lodging) are restricted to a short, sleeveless garment. The term "scholar" in relation to Oxford therefore has a specific meaning as well as the more general meaning of someone of outstanding academic ability. In previous times, there were "noblemen commoners" and "gentlemen commoners", but these ranks were abolished in the 19th century. "Closed" scholarships, available only to candidates who fitted specific conditions such as coming from specific schools, were abolished in the 1970s and 1980s.
Libraries
The university maintains the largest university library system in the UK, and, with over 11 million volumes housed on of shelving, the Bodleian group is the second-largest library in the UK, after the British Library. The Bodleian is a
legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary reposi ...
library, which means that it is entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the UK. As such, its collection is growing at a rate of over three miles (five kilometres) of shelving every year.
The buildings referred to as the university's main research library, The Bodleian, consist of the original Bodleian Library in the Old Schools Quadrangle, founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598 and opened in 1602, the Radcliffe Camera, the Clarendon Building, and the Weston Library. A tunnel underneath Broad Street connects these buildings, with the Gladstone Link, which opened to readers in 2011, connecting the Old Bodleian and Radcliffe Camera.
The Bodleian Libraries group was formed in 2000, bringing the Bodleian Library and some of the subject libraries together. It now comprises 28 libraries, a number of which have been created by bringing previously separate collections together, including the Sackler Library,
Law Library
A law library is a special library used by law students, lawyers, judges and their law clerks, historians and other scholars of legal history in order to research the law. Law libraries are also used by people who draft or advocate for new la ...
, Social Science Library and Radcliffe Science Library. Another major product of this collaboration has been a joint integrated library system, OLIS (Oxford Libraries Information System), and its public interface, SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online), which provides an electronic catalogue covering all member libraries, as well as the libraries of individual colleges and other faculty libraries, which are not members of the group but do share cataloguing information.
A new book depository opened in South Marston, Swindon in October 2010, and recent building projects include the remodelling of the New Bodleian building, which was renamed the Weston Library when it reopened in 2015. The renovation is designed to better showcase the library's various treasures (which include a Shakespeare
First Folio
''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...
and a
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the " Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed ...
) as well as temporary exhibitions.
The Bodleian engaged in a mass-digitisation project with Google in 2004. Notable electronic resources hosted by the Bodleian Group include the ''Electronic Enlightenment Project'', which was awarded the 2010 Digital Prize by the
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) is an interdisciplinary scholarly society founded in 1971 and based in the United Kingdom which promotes the study of all aspects of eighteenth-century history and culture. Its members are ...
.
Museums
Oxford maintains a number of museums and galleries, open for free to the public. The Ashmolean Museum, founded in 1683, is the oldest museum in the UK, and the oldest university museum in the world. It holds significant collections of art and archaeology, including works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Turner
Turner may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Turner (surname), a common surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
* Turner (given name), a list of people with the given name
*One who uses a lathe for turni ...
Scorpion Macehead
The Scorpion macehead (also known as the ''Major Scorpion macehead'') is a decorated ancient Egyptian mace (bludgeon), macehead found by United Kingdom, British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green (Egyptologist), Frederick W. Gr ...
, the Parian Marble and the Alfred Jewel. It also contains " The Messiah", a pristine Stradivarius violin, regarded by some as one of the finest examples in existence.
The University Museum of Natural History holds the university's zoological, entomological and geological specimens. It is housed in a large neo-Gothic building on
Parks Road
Parks Road is a road in Oxford, England, with several Oxford University colleges along its route. It runs north–south from the Banbury Road and Norham Gardens at the northern end, where it continues into Bradmore Road, to the junction with B ...
, in the university's Science Area. Among its collection are the skeletons of a ''
Tyrannosaurus rex
''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...
'' and '' Triceratops'', and the most complete remains of a dodo found anywhere in the world. It also hosts the
Simonyi Simonyi is a surname of Hungarian origin, and may refer to the following prominent figures who bear that name:
* András Simonyi, Hungarian ambassador to the United States
* André Simonyi, Hungarian-French former football player
* Charles Simonyi ...
Marcus du Sautoy
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popu ...
.
Adjoining the Museum of Natural History is the
Pitt Rivers Museum
Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...
, founded in 1884, which displays the university's archaeological and anthropological collections, currently holding over 500,000 items. It recently built a new research annexe; its staff have been involved with the teaching of anthropology at Oxford since its foundation, when as part of his donation General Augustus Pitt Rivers stipulated that the university establish a lectureship in anthropology.
The
Museum of the History of Science
The History of Science Museum in Broad Street, Oxford, England, holds a leading collection of scientific instruments from Middle Ages to the 19th century. The museum building is also known as the Old Ashmolean Building to distinguish it from th ...
is housed on Broad Street in the world's oldest-surviving purpose-built museum building. It contains 15,000 artefacts, from antiquity to the 20th century, representing almost all aspects of the history of science. In the Faculty of Music on St Aldate's is the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, a collection mostly of instruments from Western classical music, from the medieval period onwards.
Christ Church Picture Gallery
Christ Church Picture Gallery is an art gallery located inside Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. The gallery holds an important collection of about 300 Old Master paintings and nearly 2,000 drawings.
The ...
The Oxford University Press is the world's second oldest and currently the largest
university press
A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. Most are nonprofit organizations and an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by schola ...
Oxford is regularly ranked within the top five universities in the world and is currently ranked first in the world in the '' Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', as well as the Forbes's World University Rankings. It held the number one position in the ''Times Good University Guide'' for eleven consecutive years, and the medical school has also maintained first place in the "Clinical, Pre-Clinical & Health" table of the ''Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings'' for the past seven consecutive years. In 2021, it ranked sixth among the universities around the world by SCImago Institutions Rankings. The ''THE'' has also recognised Oxford as one of the world's "six super brands" on its ''World Reputation Rankings'', along with Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
, and Stanford. The university is fifth worldwide on the ''
US News
''U.S. News & World Report'' (USNWR) is an American media company that publishes news, consumer advice, rankings, and analysis. It was launched in 1948 as the merger of domestic-focused weekly newspaper ''U.S. News'' and international-focused ...
'' ranking. Its
Saïd Business School
Saïd Business School (Oxford Saïd or SBS) is the business school of the University of Oxford. The School is a provider of management education and is consistently ranked as one of the world's top business schools.
Oxford School of Management ...
came 13th in the world in ''Financial Times'' ''Global MBA Ranking''.
Oxford was ranked 13th in the world in 2022 by the Nature Index, which measures the largest contributors to papers published in 82 leading journals. It is ranked fifth best university worldwide and first in Britain for forming
CEOs
Kea ( el, Κέα), also known as Tzia ( el, Τζια) and in antiquity Keos ( el, Κέως, la, Ceos), is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit.
Geography
It is the island of ...
according to the ''Professional Ranking World Universities'', and first in the UK for the quality of its graduates as chosen by the recruiters of the UK's major companies.
In the 2018 Complete University Guide, all 38 subjects offered by Oxford rank within the top 10 nationally meaning Oxford was one of only two multi-faculty universities (along with Cambridge) in the UK to have 100% of their subjects in the top 10. Computer Science, Medicine, Philosophy, Politics and Psychology were ranked first in the UK by the guide.
According to the QS World University Rankings by Subject, the University of Oxford also ranks as number one in the world for four Humanities disciplines: English Language and Literature, Modern Languages, Geography, and History. It also ranks second globally for Anthropology, Archaeology, Law, Medicine, Politics & International Studies, and Psychology.
Student life
Traditions
Academic dress is required for examinations, matriculation, disciplinary hearings, and when visiting university officers. A referendum held among the Oxford student body in 2015 showed 76% against making it voluntary in examinations – 8,671 students voted, with the 40.2% turnout the highest ever for a UK student union referendum. This was widely interpreted by students as being a vote not so much on making
subfusc
The University of Oxford has a long tradition of academic dress, which continues to the present day.
When academic dress is worn
Unlike most other universities, which only usually require it during specific university ceremonies such as gr ...
voluntary, but rather, in effect, on abolishing it by default, in that if a minority of people came to exams without subfusc, the rest would soon follow. In July 2012 the regulations regarding academic dress were modified to be more inclusive to transgender people.
Other traditions and customs vary by college. For example, some colleges have formal hall six times a week, but in others this only happens occasionally, or even not at all. At most colleges these formal meals require gowns to be worn, and a Latin grace is said.
''Balls'' are major events held by colleges; the largest, held triennially in ninth week of Trinity Term, are called commemoration balls; the dress code is usually white tie. Many other colleges hold smaller events during the year that they call summer balls or parties. These are usually held on an annual or irregular basis, and are usually black tie.
Punting is a common summer leisure activity.
There are several more or less quirky traditions peculiar to individual colleges, for example the All Souls Mallard song.
Clubs and societies
Sport is played between college teams, in tournaments known as cuppers (the term is also used for some non-sporting competitions). In addition to these there are higher standard university wide groups. Significant focus is given to annual varsity matches played against Cambridge, the most famous of which is
The Boat Race
The Boat Race is an annual set of rowing races between the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Oxford University Boat Club, traditionally rowed between open-weight eights on the River Thames in London, England. There are separate men's ...
, watched by a TV audience of between five and ten million viewers. This outside interest reflects the importance of rowing to many of those within the university. Much attention is given to the termly intercollegiate rowing regattas: Christ Church Regatta, Torpids, and
Summer Eights
Eights Week, also known as Summer Eights, is a four-day regatta of bumps races which constitutes the University of Oxford's main intercollegiate rowing event of the year. The regatta takes place in May of each year, from the Wednesday to the ...
. A blue is an award given to those who compete at the university team level in certain sports. As well as traditional sports, there are teams for activities such as Octopush and
quidditch
Quidditch is a fictional sport invented by author J.K. Rowling for her fantasy book series ''Harry Potter''. It first appeared in the novel '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'' (1997). It is a dangerous but popular sport played by wi ...
.
There are two weekly student newspapers: the independent '' Cherwell'' and OUSU's ''
The Oxford Student
''The Oxford Student'' is a newspaper produced by and for students of the University of Oxford; often abbreviated to ''The OxStu''. The paper was established in 1991 by the Oxford University Student Union (Oxford SU) and is published every for ...
''. Other publications include the ''Isis'' magazine, the satirical '' Oxymoron'', the graduate '' Oxonian Review'', the ''Oxford Political Review'', and the online only newspaper ''The Oxford Blue''. The
student radio
Campus radio (also known as college radio, university radio or student radio) is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively created or produced ...
station is
Oxide Radio
Oxide Radio is a student radio station run by members of Oxford University in Oxford, England. It was established in 2001 and as ''Altered Radio'' made brief forays onto FM in 2004 and 2005 before complications regarding FM licensing and funding ...
. Most colleges have chapel choirs. Music, drama, and other arts societies exist both at the collegiate level and as university-wide groups, such as the
Oxford University Dramatic Society
The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) is the principal funding body and provider of theatrical services to the many independent student productions put on by students in Oxford, England. Not all student productions at Oxford University ...
and the Oxford Revue. Unlike most other collegiate societies, musical ensembles actively encourage players from other colleges.
Most academic areas have student societies of some form which are open to students studying all courses, for example the
Scientific Society
A learned society (; also learned academy, scholarly society, or academic association) is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline, profession, or a group of related disciplines such as the arts and science. Membership may ...
. There are groups for almost all faiths, political parties, countries, and cultures.
The
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford England, whose membership is drawn primarily from the University of Oxford. Founded in 1823, it is one of Britain's oldest ...
(not to be confused with the Oxford University Student Union) hosts weekly debates and high-profile speakers. There have historically been elite invitation-only societies such as the Bullingdon Club.
Student union and common rooms
The Oxford University Student Union, formerly better known by its acronym OUSU and now rebranded as Oxford SU, exists to represent students in the university's decision-making, to act as the voice for students in the national higher education policy debate, and to provide direct services to the student body. Reflecting the collegiate nature of the University of Oxford itself, OUSU is both an association of Oxford's more than 21,000 individual students and a federation of the affiliated college common rooms, and other affiliated organisations that represent subsets of the undergraduate and graduate students. The OUSU Executive Committee includes six full-time salaried sabbatical officers, who generally serve in the year following completion of their Final Examinations.
The importance of collegiate life is such that for many students their college JCR (Junior Common Room, for undergraduates) or MCR (Middle Common Room, for graduates) is seen as more important than OUSU. JCRs and MCRs each have a committee, with a president and other elected students representing their peers to college authorities. Additionally, they organise events and often have significant budgets to spend as they wish (money coming from their colleges and sometimes other sources such as student-run bars). (It is worth noting that JCR and MCR are terms that are used to refer to rooms for use by members, as well as the student bodies.) Not all colleges use this JCR/MCR structure, for example
Wadham College
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
's entire student population is represented by a combined Students' Union and purely graduate colleges have different arrangements.
Notable alumni
Throughout its history, a sizeable number of Oxford alumni, known as Oxonians, have become notable in many varied fields, both academic and otherwise. A total of 70 Nobel prize-winners have studied or taught at Oxford, with prizes won in all six categories.
More information on notable members of the university can be found in the individual college articles. An individual may be associated with two or more colleges, as an undergraduate, postgraduate and/or member of staff.
Politics
Thirty British
prime ministers
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is no ...
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. Heath a ...
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
John Gorton
Sir John Grey Gorton (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002) was an Australian politician who served as the nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1968 to 1971. He led the Liberal Party during that time, having previously been a l ...
,
Malcolm Fraser
John Malcolm Fraser (; 21 May 1930 – 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Fraser was raised on hi ...
Tony Abbott
Anthony John Abbott (; born 4 November 1957) is a former Australian politician who served as the 28th prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Abbott was born in Londo ...
, and
Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician and businessman who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Turnbull grad ...
Liaquat Ali Khan
Liaquat Ali Khan ( ur, ; 1 October 1895 – 16 October 1951), also referred to in Pakistan as ''Quaid-e-Millat'' () or ''Shaheed-e-Millat'' ( ur, lit=Martyr of the Nation, label=none, ), was a Pakistani statesman, lawyer, political theoris ...
Feroz Khan Noon
Sir Malik Feroz Khan Noon, ( ur, ملک فیروز خان نون; 7 May 18939 December 1970), best known as Feroze Khan, was a Pakistani politician who served as the seventh prime minister of Pakistan from 1957 until being removed wh ...
Lester B. Pearson
Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian scholar, statesman, diplomat, and politician who served as the 14th prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968.
Born in Newtonbrook, Ontario (now part of ...
and
John Turner
John Napier Wyndham Turner (June 7, 1929September 19, 2020) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 17th prime minister of Canada from June to September 1984. He served as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and leader of t ...
), two
Prime Ministers of India
The prime minister of India is the chief executive of the Government of India. Although the President of India is the constitutional, nominal, and ceremonial head of state, in practice and ordinarily, the executive authority is vested in the P ...
Norman Washington Manley
Norman Washington Manley (4 July 1893 – 2 September 1969) was a Jamaican statesman who served as the first and only Premier of Jamaica. A Rhodes Scholar, Manley became one of Jamaica's leading lawyers in the 1920s. Manley was an advocate ...
of Jamaica,
Haitham bin Tariq Al Said
Haitham bin Tariq Al Said ( ar, هيثم بن طارق آل سعيد, Heysem bin Târık Âl Saîd; born 13 October 1954) is the current Sultan of Oman, reigning since January 2020 following the death of his cousin, Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
Pr ...
Eric Williams
Eric Eustace Williams (25 September 1911 – 29 March 1981) was a Trinidad and Tobago politician who is regarded by some as the " Father of the Nation", having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October ...
(Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago),
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter.
The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning " ...
(former President of Peru), Abhisit Vejjajiva (former Prime Minister of Thailand), and Bill Clinton (the first President of the United States to have attended Oxford; he attended as a Rhodes Scholar).
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck ( dz, འཇིགས་མེད་གེ་སར་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་དབང་ཕྱུག་, ; born 21 February 1980) is the Druk Gyalpo (Dzongkha: Dragon King) of the Kingdom of Bhutan. After his ...
, the current reigning Druk Gyalpo (Dragon King) of Bhutan, was a member of Magdalen College. The world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate,
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai ( ur, , , pronunciation: ; born 12 July 1997), is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second P ...
, completed a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Law
Oxford has produced a large number of distinguished jurists, judges and lawyers around the world. Lords Bingham and Denning, commonly recognised as two of the most influential English judges in the history of the common law, both studied at Oxford. Within the United Kingdom, three of the current justices of the Supreme Court are Oxford-educated: Robert Reed (Deputy President of the Supreme Court), Nicholas Wilson, and Michael Briggs; retired Justices include David Neuberger (President of the Supreme Court 2012–2017), Jonathan Mance (Deputy President of the Supreme Court 2017–2018), Alan Rodger,
Jonathan Sumption
Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption, Lord Sumption, (born 9 December 1948), is a British author, medieval historian and former senior judge who sat on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom between 2012 and 2018. Sumption was sworn in as a Jus ...
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
,
Thomas Wolsey
Thomas Wolsey ( – 29 November 1530) was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's Lord High Almoner, almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the ...
Kenneth Diplock
William John Kenneth Diplock, Baron Diplock, (8 December 1907 – 14 October 1985) was a British barrister and judge who served as a lord of appeal in ordinary between 1968 and until his death in 1985. Appointed to the English High Court in 1 ...
,
Richard Wilberforce
Richard Orme Wilberforce, Baron Wilberforce, (11 March 1907 – 15 February 2003) was a British judge. He was a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1964 to 1982.
Early life and career
Born in Jalandhar, India, Richard Wilberforce was the son of ...
Leslie Scarman
Leslie George Scarman, Baron Scarman, (29 July 1911 – 8 December 2004) was an English judge and barrister, who served as a Law Lord until his retirement in 1986.
Early life and education
Scarman was born in Streatham but grew up on the borde ...
Master of the Rolls
The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Head of Civil Justice. As a judge, the Master of ...
John Laws
Richard John Sinclair Laws CBE (born 8 August 1935) is a Papua New Guinean-born Australian radio announcer. For 50 years, until 2007, he was the host of an Australian morning radio program combining music with interviews, opinion, live advert ...
Attorneys General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general.
In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exe ...
have included
Dominic Grieve
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (born 24 May 1956) is a British barrister and former politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. He served as the Member of Parl ...
,
Nicholas Lyell
Nicholas Walter Lyell, Baron Lyell of Markyate, PC, QC (6 December 1938 – 30 August 2010) was an English Conservative politician, known for much of his active political career as Sir Nicholas Lyell.
Early life
Born in London, he was the son ...
,
Patrick Mayhew
Patrick Barnabas Burke Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, (11 September 1929 – 25 June 2016) was a British barrister and politician.
Early life
atrick’s father, George Mayhew, was a decorated army officer turned oil executive; his mother, S ...
Frank Soskice
Frank Soskice, Baron Stow Hill, (23 July 1902 – 1 January 1979) was a British lawyer and Labour Party politician.
Background and education
Soskice's father, was from a family of Russian Jewish merchants. David Soskice became involved in ...
Thomas Hetherington
Major Sir Thomas Chalmers Hetherington, (18 September 1926 – 28 March 2007), better known as Sir Tony Hetherington, was a British barrister. He was Director of Public Prosecutions (England and Wales), Director of Public Prosecutions of England ...
QC, Dame
Barbara Mills
Dame Barbara Jean Lyon Mills DBE, QC (''née'' Warnock; 10 August 1940 – 28 May 2011) was a British barrister. She held various senior public appointments including Director of Public Prosecutions, and was widely seen as a pioneer for women g ...
QC and Sir
Keir Starmer
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer (; born 2 September 1962) is a British politician and barrister who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St Pancras s ...
John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan (May 20, 1899 – December 29, 1971) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. Harlan is usually called John Marshall Harlan II to distinguish him ...
,
David Souter
David Hackett Souter ( ; born September 17, 1939) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat ...
Humphrey Waldock
Sir Claud Humphrey Meredith Waldock, (13 August 1904 – 15 August 1981) was a British jurist and international lawyer.
Education
Waldock was born to a tea planter and his wife in Colombo, Ceylon. He attended Uppingham School and went up to ...
Kenneth Hayne
Kenneth Madison Hayne (born 5 June 1945) is a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, the highest court in the Australian court hierarchy.
Early life and education
Hayne was born in Gympie, Queensland and attended Scotch College, Melbou ...
Cornelia Sorabji
Cornelia Sorabji (15 November 1866 – 6 July 1954) was an Indian lawyer, social reformer and writer. She was the first female graduate from Bombay University, and the first woman to study law at Oxford University. Returning to India after he ...
, Oxford's first female law student, was India's first female advocate; in Hong Kong, Aarif Barma, Thomas Au and Doreen Le Pichon currently serve in the Court of Appeal (Hong Kong), while
Charles Ching
Charles Arthur Ching (, 7 October 1935http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr99-00/english/panels/ajls/papers/2387e04.pdf –30 November 2000) was a judge in Hong Kong.
Born Charles Arthur Ching into an intellectual family in Hong Kong, Ching was educate ...
Edwin Cameron
Edwin Cameron SCOB (born 15 February 1953 in Pretoria) is a retired judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as "one ...
served on South Africa's
Constitutional Court
A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...
; six
Puisne Justice
A puisne judge or puisne justice (; from french: puisné or ; , 'since, later' + , 'born', i.e. 'junior') is a dated term for an ordinary judge or a judge of lesser rank of a particular court. Use
The term is used almost exclusively in common law ...
Federal Court of Canada
The Federal Court of Canada, which succeeded the Exchequer Court of Canada in 1971, was a national court of Canada that had limited jurisdiction to hear certain types of disputes arising under the federal government's legislative jurisdiction. O ...
were also educated at Oxford.
The list of noted
legal scholar
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
s includes
H. L. A. Hart
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (18 July 190719 December 1992), known simply as H. L. A. Hart, was an English legal philosopher. He was Professor of Jurisprudence (University of Oxford), Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University an ...
Jeremy Waldron
Jeremy Waldron (; born 13 October 1953) is a New Zealand professor of law and philosophy. He holds a University Professorship at the New York University School of Law, is affiliated with the New York University Department of Philosophy, and was ...
Peter Birks
Peter Brian Herrenden Birks (3 October 1941 – 6 July 2004) was the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford from 1989 until his death. He also became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1989, and an honorary Queen's counsel in ...
,
John Finnis
John Mitchell Finnis, , (born 28 July 1940) is an Australian legal philosopher, jurist and scholar specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Notre Dame Law School and a ...
Joseph Raz
Joseph Raz (; he, יוסף רז; born Zaltsman; 21 March 19392 May 2022) was an Israeli legal, moral and political philosopher. He was an advocate of legal positivism and is known for his conception of perfectionist liberalism. Raz spent mos ...
,
Paul Craig
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
* Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
,
Leslie Green
Leslie William Green (6 February 1875 – 31 August 1908) was an English architect. He is best known for his design of iconic stations constructed on the London Underground railway system in central London during the first decade of the 20t ...
,
Tony Honoré
Anthony Maurice Honoré, (30 March 1921 – 26 February 2019) was a British lawyer and jurist, known for his work on ownership, causation and Roman law.John Gardne''Tony Honoré as Teacher and Mentor: A Personal Memoir''; read 1 April 2014.
Bio ...
,
Neil MacCormick
Sir Donald Neil MacCormick (27 May 1941 – 5 April 2009) was a Scottish legal philosopher and politician. He was Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh from 1972 until 2008. He was a ...
and
Hugh Collins
Hugh Collins, (born 21 June 1953) is emeritus Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College. He retains the former title as emeritus after Timothy Endicott took up the professorship on 1 July 202 ...
. Other distinguished practitioners who have attended Oxford include Lord PannickQc,
Geoffrey Robertson
Geoffrey Ronald Robertson (born 30 September 1946) is a human rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship.
QC,
Amal Clooney
Amal Clooney (; ar, أمل علم الدين; born 3 February 1978) is a Lebanese and British barrister.
Her clients include Filipino and American journalist Maria Ressa; former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed; Julian Assange, the ...
Michael Atiyah
Sir Michael Francis Atiyah (; 22 April 1929 – 11 January 2019) was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded th ...
,
Daniel Quillen
Daniel Gray "Dan" Quillen (June 22, 1940 – April 30, 2011) was an American mathematician. He is known for being the "prime architect" of higher algebraic ''K''-theory, for which he was awarded the Cole Prize in 1975 and the Fields Medal in 197 ...
,
Simon Donaldson
Sir Simon Kirwan Donaldson (born 20 August 1957) is an English mathematician known for his work on the topology of smooth (differentiable) four-dimensional manifolds, Donaldson–Thomas theory, and his contributions to Kähler geometry. H ...
Andrew Wiles
Sir Andrew John Wiles (born 11 April 1953) is an English mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specializing in number theory. He is best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he was awa ...
, who proved
Fermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been ...
, was educated at Oxford and is currently the Regius Professor and Royal Society Research Professor in Mathematics at Oxford.
Marcus du Sautoy
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popu ...
and Roger Penrose are both currently mathematics professors, and Jackie Stedall was a professor of the university.
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...
Quicksort
Quicksort is an efficient, general-purpose sorting algorithm. Quicksort was developed by British computer scientist Tony Hoare in 1959 and published in 1961, it is still a commonly used algorithm for sorting. Overall, it is slightly faster than ...
.
The university is associated with eleven winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, six in physics and sixteen in medicine.
Scientists who performed research in Oxford include chemist Dorothy Hodgkin who received her Nobel Prize for "determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances",Howard Florey who shared the 1945 Nobel prize "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases", and John B. Goodenough, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 "for the development of lithium-ion batteries". Both Richard Dawkins and
Frederick Soddy
Frederick Soddy FRS (2 September 1877 – 22 September 1956) was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also prov ...
studied at the university and returned for research purposes. Robert Hooke,Edwin Hubble, and Stephen Hawking all studied in Oxford.
Robert Boyle, a founder of modern chemistry, never formally studied or held a post within the university, but resided within the city to be part of the scientific community and was awarded an honorary degree. Notable scientists who spent brief periods at Oxford include Albert Einstein developer of
general theory of relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric scientific theory, theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current descr ...
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...
Schrödinger's cat
In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, while it is unobserved in ...
thought experiment. Structural engineer Roma Agrawal, responsible for London's
Shard
Shard or sherd is a sharp piece of glass, pottery or stone.
Shard may also refer to:
Places
* Shard End, a place in Birmingham, United Kingdom
Architecture
* Dresden Shard, a redesign of the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germa ...
, attributes her love of engineering to a summer placement during her undergraduate physics degree at Oxford.
Economists Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, E. F. Schumacher, and Amartya Sen all spent time at Oxford.
Literature, music, and drama
Writers associated with Oxford include
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir '' Testament of Youth'' recounted her experiences during the Fir ...
,
A.S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy ( Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt ( ), is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than t ...
Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 ''The Times'' listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". ''The Ob ...
,
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
Aft ...
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel ''Catch-22'', a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for ...
,
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
,
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxle ...
Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss (born August 18, 1974) is an American author best known for her four novels '' Man Walks into a Room'' (2002), ''The History of Love'' (2005), ''Great House'' (2010) and '' Forest Dark'' (2017), which have been translated into 35 l ...
Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her ...
Philip Pullman
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy '' His Dark Materials'' and '' The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ'', a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, ''T ...
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, ''The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, ''Jill'' (1946) and ''A Girl in Winter'' (1947 ...
Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton (9 January 172821 May 1790) was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, following the death of William Whitehead.
He is sometimes called ''Thomas Warton the younger'' to disti ...
,
Henry James Pye
Henry James Pye (; 20 February 1745 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet, and Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. His appointment owed nothing to poetic achievement, and was probably a reward for political favours. Pye was merely a ...
,
Robert Southey
Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...
,
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is ...
Sir John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 18487 October 1918) was an English composer, teacher and historian of music. Born in Richmond Hill in Bournemouth, Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is be ...
,
George Butterworth
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC (12 July 18855 August 1916) was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll '' The Banks of Green Willow'' and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from ''A Shropshire Lad''.
Early ...
,
John Taverner
John Taverner ( – 18 October 1545) was an English composer and organist, regarded as one of the most important English composers of his era. He is best-known for ''Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas'' and ''The Western Wynde Mass'', and ''Missa Coro ...
,
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantat ...
,
James Whitbourn
James Whitbourn (born 1963) is a British composer and conductor.
Biography
James Whitbourn was born in Kent and educated at Skinners' School before winning a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained his first two degrees. ...
Hugh Grant
Hugh John Mungo Grant (born 9 September 1960) is an English actor. He established himself early in his career as both a charming, and vulnerable romantic lead and has since transitioned into a dramatic character actor. Among his numerous a ...
,
Kate Beckinsale
Kathrin Romany Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress and model. After some minor television roles, her film debut was ''Much Ado About Nothing'' (1993) while a student at the University of Oxford. She appeared in British costume ...
,
Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Mary Ellen Pike (born 1979) is a British actress. She began her acting career by appearing in stage productions such as ''Romeo and Juliet'' and ''Gas Light''. After her screen debut in the television film ''A Rather English Marriage'' ...
,
Felicity Jones
Felicity Rose Hadley Jones (born 17 October 1983) is a British actress. She started her professional acting career as a child, appearing in '' The Treasure Seekers'' (1996) at age 12. She went on to play Ethel Hallow for one series of the tel ...
,
Gemma Chan
Gemma Chan (born 29 November 1982) is an English actress. Born and raised in London, Chan attended the Newstead Wood School for Girls and studied law at Worcester College, Oxford before choosing to pursue a career in acting instead, enrolling at t ...
,
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE (19 April 193527 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writ ...
,
Michael Palin
Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, television presenter, and public speaker. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Since 1980, he has made a number of travel documentaries.
Palin w ...
,
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh comedian, director, historian, actor, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy team.
After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and ...
,
Anna Popplewell
Anna Katherine Popplewell is an English actress. Popplewell is known for playing Susan Pevensie in the fantasy film series '' ''The Chronicles of Narnia' (2005–2010), which grossed an excess of US$1.5 billion and earned her a number o ...
and Rowan Atkinson were students at the university, as were filmmakers
Ken Loach
Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936) is a British film director and screenwriter. His socially critical directing style and socialist ideals are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty ('' Poor Cow'', 1967), homelessn ...
and
Richard Curtis
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis (born 8 November 1956) is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, producer and film director. One of Britain's most successful comedy screenwriters, he is known primarily for romantic comedy films, among them '' ...
English cardinals
This is a list of cardinals of the Catholic Church from England. It does not include cardinals of non-English national origin appointed to English ecclesiastical offices such as the cardinal protectors of England.
Dates in parentheses are the da ...
Rowan Williams
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bish ...
, who studied at
Wadham College
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...
Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important ...
' teaching is commemorated with a monument in the University Church of St. Mary. Religious reformer
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of ...
was an Oxford scholar, for a time Master of
Balliol College
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
Dean of St Paul's
The dean of St Paul's is a member of, and chair of the Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral in London in the Church of England. The dean of St Paul's is also ''ex officio'' dean of the Order of the British Empire.
The current dean is Andrew Tremlett, ...
, and friend of
Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' w ...
Caroline Divines
The Caroline Divines were influential theologians and writers in the Church of England who lived during the reigns of King Charles I and, after the Restoration, King Charles II (Latin: Carolus). There is no official list of Caroline-era divi ...
e.g. in particular
William Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...
as President of St. John's and Chancellor of the university, and the Non-Jurors, e.g.
Thomas Ken
Thomas Ken (July 1637 – 19 March 1711) was an English cleric who was considered the most eminent of the English non-juring bishops, and one of the fathers of modern English hymnody.
Early life
Ken was born in 1637 at Little Berkhampstead, ...
had close Oxford connections. The founder of
Methodism
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's br ...
,
John Wesley
John Wesley (; 2 March 1791) was an English people, English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The soci ...
, studied at Christ Church and was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. Britain's first woman to be an ordained minister,
Constance Coltman
Constance Mary Coltman (née Todd; 23 May 1889 - 26 March 1969) was one of the first women ordained to Christian ministry in Britain. She practised within the Congregational Church. A decade earlier Gertrude von Petzold became minister at Narborou ...
, studied at
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
Edward Bouverie Pusey
Edward Bouverie Pusey (; 22 August 180016 September 1882) was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement.
Early years
...
and
John Keble
John Keble (25 April 1792 – 29 March 1866) was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him.
Early life
Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Glouce ...
. Other religious figures were
Mirza Nasir Ahmad
Hāfiz Mirza Nasir Ahmad ( ur, ) (16 November 1909 – 9 June 1982) was the third caliph ( ar, خليفة المسيح الثالث, ''khalīfatul masīh al-Thālith''), head of the Ahmadiyya Community. He was elected as the third successor o ...
, the third
Caliph
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
of the
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
Ahmadiyya (, ), officially the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ, ar, الجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية, al-Jamāʿah al-Islāmīyah al-Aḥmadīyah; ur, , translit=Jamā'at Aḥmadiyyah Musl ...
,
Shoghi Effendi
Shoghí Effendi (; 1 March 1897 – 4 November 1957) was the grandson and successor of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, appointed to the role of Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957. He created a series of teaching plans that over ...
, one of the appointed leaders of the
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the essential worth of all religions and the unity of all people. Established by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century, it initially developed in Iran and parts of the ...
, and
Joseph Cordeiro
Joseph Marie Anthony Cordeiro (19 January 1918 – 11 February 1994) was the first Pakistani cardinal.
Early life
Cordeiro was born to a Goan family. He was educated at St Patrick's High School, Karachi, the University of Bombay and Oxford ...
, the first Pakistani Catholic cardinal.
Philosophy
Oxford's philosophical tradition started in the medieval era, with
Robert Grosseteste
Robert Grosseteste, ', ', or ') or the gallicised Robert Grosstête ( ; la, Robertus Grossetesta or '). Also known as Robert of Lincoln ( la, Robertus Lincolniensis, ', &c.) or Rupert of Lincoln ( la, Rubertus Lincolniensis, &c.). ( ; la, Rob ...
and
William of Ockham
William of Ockham, OFM (; also Occam, from la, Gulielmus Occamus; 1287 – 10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and Catholic theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small vil ...
, commonly known for Occam's razor, among those teaching at the university.
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
,
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham (; 15 February 1748 Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._4_February_1747.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 4 February 1747">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.htm ...
and the
empiricist
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
John Locke received degrees from Oxford. Though the latter's main works were written after leaving Oxford, Locke was heavily influenced by his twelve years at the university.
Oxford philosophers of the 20th century include
Richard Swinburne
Richard Granville Swinburne (IPA ) (born December 26, 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for ...
Peter Hacker
Peter Michael Stephan Hacker (born 15 July 1939) is a British philosopher.
His principal expertise is in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophical anthropology. He is known for his detailed exegesis and interpretatio ...
, philosopher of mind, language, anthropology, and he is also known for his critique of
cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental process ...
; J.L. Austin, a leading proponent of ordinary-language philosophy;
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October 1976) was a British philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." He was a representative of the generation of British ord ...
, author of ''
The Concept of Mind
''The Concept of Mind'' is a 1949 book by philosopher Gilbert Ryle, in which the author argues that "mind" is "a philosophical illusion hailing chiefly from René Descartes and sustained by logical errors and 'category mistakes' which have becom ...
''; and Derek Parfit, who specialised in personal identity. Other commonly read modern philosophers to have studied at the university include
A. J. Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books '' Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) ...
,
Elizabeth Anscombe
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, ...
,
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative pri ...
,
Mary Midgley
Mary Beatrice Midgley (' Scrutton; 13 September 1919 – 10 October 2018) was a British philosopher. A senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, she was known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first b ...
,
Iris Murdoch
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her ...
,
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...
,
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' ...
Onora O'Neill
Onora Sylvia O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (born 23 August 1941) is a British philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords.
Early life and education
Onora Sylvia O'Neill was born on 23 August 1941 in Aughafatten. The dau ...
,
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in ...
,
Michael Sandel
Michael Joseph Sandel (; born March 5, 1953) is an American political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard University Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course t ...
, and
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularit ...
. John Searle, presenter of the Chinese room thought experiment, studied and began his academic career at the university. Likewise, Philippa Foot, who mentioned the
trolley problem
The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway tram or ...
, studied and taught at
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister, who had been at Exeter College and Merton College, ran the first sub-four-minute mile in Oxford.
Some 150 Olympic medal-winners have academic connections with the university, including Sir Matthew Pinsent, quadruple gold-medallist rower.
Rowers from Oxford who have won gold at the Olympics or World Championships include
Michael Blomquist
Michael Blomquist (born August 14, 1981 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) is an American rower and a former World Champion.
Education
Blomquist was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. He then enrolled at St Peter's Co ...
,
Ed Coode
Edward Coode, MBE (born 19 June 1975) is a British rower, twice World Champion and Olympic Gold medalist.
Early life
Born in Cornwall in 1975, Coode boarded at Papplewick School and Eton College. He studied marine biology at University of N ...
Tim Foster
Timothy James Carrington Foster, MBE (born 19 January 1970) is an English rower who won a gold medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Career
He began rowing at Bedford Modern School and competed in the World Rowing Junior Ch ...
,
Luka Grubor
Luka Grubor MBE (born 27 December 1973) is a retired rower, born in Zagreb, who competed internationally for Yugoslavia, Croatia and Great Britain, as well as for Oxford in the 1997 Boat Race. Grubor won a gold medal in the men's eight at the ...
,
Christopher Liwski
Christopher Donald Liwski (born April 21, 1980) is a Canadian American rower, a six-time U.S. National Team member, a double world championship medal winner, and a two-time member of the United States Olympic Rowing Team.
Career Earl ...
,
Matthew Pinsent
Sir Matthew Clive Pinsent, (; born 10 October 1970) is an English rower and broadcaster. During his rowing career, he won 10 world championship gold medals and four consecutive Olympic gold medals.
Since retiring, he has worked as a sports br ...
,
Pete Reed
Peter K. Reed OBE (born 27 July 1981) is a retired British Olympic rower. Reed is a three-times Olympic gold medallist – earning gold in the Men's coxless four at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, and then a gold medal in the Men's eight at the 2 ...
,
Jonny Searle
Jonathan "Jonny" William C. Searle (born 8 May 1969) is a British rower and business man. Along with his brother Gregory, and coxswain Garry Herbert, Searle won the gold medal in the coxed pair event at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Early ...
,
Andrew Triggs Hodge
Andrew Triggs Hodge (born 3 March 1979) is a British former rower - a three time Olympic champion and four time world champion. In the British coxless four in 2012 he set a world's best time which still stood as of 2021.
Education
Born in Hal ...
,
Jake Wetzel
Jacob Wetzel (born December 26, 1976) is a Canadian rower. He has represented both Canada and the United States at the World Championships and the Olympics. He was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
College years
As a te ...
,
Michael Wherley
Michael J. Wherley (born March 15, 1972 in Waconia, Minnesota) is a 3-time World Champion and 2-time Olympian in the sport of rowing. He started rowing at the University of Minnesota in 1990, before rowing at Penn AC Rowing Association ...
, and Barney Williams. Many Oxford graduates have also risen to the highest echelon in cricket:
Harry Altham
Harry Surtees Altham (30 November 1888 – 11 March 1965) was an English cricketer who became an important figure in the game as an administrator, historian and coach. His ''Wisden'' obituary described him as "among the best known personalities ...
googly
In the game of cricket, a googly refers to a type of delivery bowled by a right-arm leg spin bowler. It is different from the normal delivery for a leg-spin bowler in that it is turning the other way. The googly is ''not'' a variation of the ...
),
Colin Cowdrey
Michael Colin Cowdrey, Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge, (24 December 19324 December 2000) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Oxford University (1952–1954), Kent County Cricket Club (1950–1976) and England (1954–1975). Univers ...
,
Gerry Crutchley
Gerald Edward Victor Crutchley (19 November 1890 – 17 August 1969) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Middlesex County Cricket Club and Oxford University Cricket Club, Oxford University between 1910 and 1930.
Crutchley was b ...
,
Jamie Dalrymple
James William Murray Dalrymple (born 21 January 1981) is a Kenyan-born former English cricketer, who played ODIs and T20Is for England. He is a right-handed batsman and off-spin bowler.
He is perhaps best known for taking a spectacular diving ...
C. B. Fry
Charles Burgess Fry (25 April 1872 – 7 September 1956) was an English sportsman, teacher, writer, editor and publisher, who is best remembered for his career as a cricketer. John Arlott described him with the words: "Charles Fry could b ...
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...
),
Douglas Jardine
Douglas Robert Jardine ( 1900 – 1958) was an English cricketer who played 22 Test matches for England, captaining the side in 15 of those matches between 1931 and 1934. A right-handed batsman, he is best known for captaining the English ...
,
Malcolm Jardine
Malcolm Robert Jardine (8 June 1869 – 16 January 1947) was an English first-class cricketer who played 46 matches, mainly for Oxford University. Although his first-class record was not impressive, he scored 140 in the University Match o ...
Alan Melville
Alan Melville (19 May 1910 – 18 April 1983) was a South African cricketer who played in 11 Tests from 1938 to 1949. He was born in Carnarvon, Northern Cape, South Africa and died at Sabie, Transvaal.
Early life and cricket career
Melville w ...
Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi
Nawab Mohammad Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi (also known as Mansur Ali Khan, or M. A. K. Pataudi; 5 January 1941 – 22 September 2011; nicknamed Tiger Pataudi) was an Indian cricketer and a former captain of the Indian cricket team.
Pataudi was a ...
,
M. J. K. Smith
Michael John Knight Smith , better known as M. J. K. Smith or Mike Smith, (born 30 June 1933) is an English former cricketer who was captain of Oxford University Cricket Club (1956), Warwickshire County Cricket Club (1957–1967) and ...
, and
Pelham Warner
Sir Pelham Francis Warner, (2 October 1873 – 30 January 1963), affectionately and better known as Plum Warner or "the Grand Old Man" of English cricket, was a Test cricketer and cricket administrator.
He was knighted for services to sport in ...
.
Oxford students have also excelled in other sports. Such alumni include
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
player
Myron Rolle
Myron L. Rolle (born October 30, 1986) is a Bahamian-American neurosurgeon and former football safety. He played college football at Florida State, and was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the sixth round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He attended the ...
( NFL player); Olympic gold medalists in athletics
David Hemery
David Peter Hemery, (born 18 July 1944) is a British former track and field athlete, best known as the winner of the 400 metres hurdles at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Early life
Hemery was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, but ...
and
Jack Lovelock
John Edward Lovelock (5 January 1910 – 28 December 1949) was a New Zealand athlete who became the world 1500m and mile record holder and 1936 Olympic champion in the 1500 metres.
Early life
Lovelock was born in the town of Crushingto ...
US Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
Charles Thomas McMillen
Charles Thomas McMillen (born May 26, 1952) is an American politician, businessman, and retired professional basketball player. A Rhodes Scholar, McMillen represented Maryland's 4th congressional district from January 3, 1987 to January 3, 199 ...
John Misha Petkevich
John Misha Petkevich (born March 3, 1949, in Minneapolis) is an American former figure skater. He is the 1971 U.S. national champion and North American champion. He placed 6th at the 1968 Winter Olympics and 5th at the 1972 Winter Olympics. His ...
Charles Wreford-Brown
Charles Wreford-Brown (9 October 1866 – 26 November 1951) was an English sportsman. He captained the England national football team and was a county cricketer during the Victorian age, and later acted as a sports legislator during the 20th ce ...
, and
Cuthbert Ottaway
Cuthbert John Ottaway (19 July 1850 – 2 April 1878)''Jackson's Oxford Journal'', 6 April 1878. was an English footballer. He was the first captain of the England football team and led his side in the first official international football ma ...
; fencer
Allan Jay
Allan Louis Neville Jay MBE (born 30 June 1931) is a British former five-time-Olympian foil and épée fencer, and world champion.
Early life
Jay was born in London, England, and is Jewish. His father died fighting in World War II in 1943. He ...
(world champion and five-time Olympian);
modern pentathlete
The modern pentathlon is an Olympic sport consisting of fencing (one-touch épée), freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross country running. The event is inspired by the traditional pentathlon held during the anc ...
rugby football
Rugby football is the collective name for the team sports of rugby union and rugby league.
Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football were once considered forms of rugby football, but are seldom now referred to as such. The ...
Simon Danielli
Simon Charles Jonathan Danielli (born 8 September 1979 in Edinburgh) is a Scottish former rugby union footballer who played on the wing for Ulster and Scotland.
Early life
Danielli who is of Italian descent, was educated at Cheltenham College ...
Ronald Poulton-Palmer
Ronald 'Ronnie' William Poulton (later sometimes Poulton-Palmer) (12 September 1889 – 5 May 1915) was an English rugby union footballer, who captained . He was killed in the First World War during the Second Battle of Ypres.
Born in nort ...
,
Joe Roff
Joe Roff (born 20 September 1975) is a retired Australian rugby union footballer and a product of the Tuggeranong Vikings Rugby Union Club in Canberra, who played on the wing or at fullback for ACT Brumbies and Australia and played 5 tests as ...
, and
William Webb Ellis
William Webb Ellis (24 November 1806 – 24 January 1872) was an English Anglican clergyman who, by tradition, has been credited as the inventor of rugby football while a pupil at Rugby School. According to legend, Webb Ellis picked up the ba ...
Three of the most well-known adventurers and explorers who attended Oxford are
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebelli ...
, one of the most notable figures of the
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personific ...
;
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918 ...
, whose life was the basis of the 1962 film ''
Lawrence of Arabia
Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–191 ...
''; and
Thomas Coryat
Thomas Coryat (also Coryate) (c. 15771617) was an English traveller and writer of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean age. He is principally remembered for two volumes of writings he left regarding his travels, often on foot, through ...
court jester
A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during the medieval and Renaissance eras. Jesters were also itinerant performers who entertained common folk at fairs and ...
of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, is credited with introducing the table fork and umbrella to England and being the first Briton to do a
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tut ...
of Europe.
Other notable figures include
Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highl ...
, an explorer, archaeologist,
mapper
MAPPER, now known as BIS, is a fourth-generation programming language from
Sperry Univac. Mapper originated in the 1970s based on some work in the 1960s, but has been kept current. It was renamed and also given an extension named ICE - Internet ...
and spy who, along with
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918 ...
, helped establish the
Hashemite
The Hashemites ( ar, الهاشميون, al-Hāshimīyūn), also House of Hashim, are the royal family of Jordan, which they have ruled since 1921, and were the royal family of the kingdoms of Hejaz (1916–1925), Syria (1920), and Iraq (1921 ...
dynasties in what is today Jordan and Iraq and played a major role in establishing and administering the modern state of Iraq;
Richard Francis Burton
Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...
, who travelled in disguise to
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
and journeyed with
John Hanning Speke
Captain John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nil ...
as the first European explorers to visit the
Great Lakes of Africa
The African Great Lakes ( sw, Maziwa Makuu; rw, Ibiyaga bigari) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. They include Lake Victoria, the second-largest fresh water lake in the ...
in search of the source of the
Nile
The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest ...
; anthropologist
Katherine Routledge
Katherine Maria Routledge (), née Pease (11 August 1866 – 13 December 1935), was an English archaeologist and anthropologist who, in 1914, initiated and carried out much of the first true survey of Easter Island.
She was the second child o ...
, who carried out the first survey of
Easter Island
Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its ne ...
; mountaineer
Tom Bourdillon
Thomas Duncan Bourdillon ( ; 16 March 1924 – 29 July 1956) was an English mountaineer and member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition which made the first ascent of Mount Everest. He died in the Valais, Switzerland, on 29 July 1956 age ...
, member of the expedition to make the first ascent of
Mount Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
.
Oxford in literature and other media
The University of Oxford is the setting for numerous works of fiction.
Oxford was mentioned in fiction as early as 1400 when
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
, in ''
Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus ...
'', referred to a "Clerk tudentof Oxenford".
By 1989, 533 novels based in Oxford had been identified and the number continues to rise.
Famous literary works range from ''
Brideshead Revisited
''Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles ...
'' by
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...
, which in 1981 was adapted as a
television serial
In television and radio programming, a serial is a show that has a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode-by-episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the complete run of ...
, to the trilogy ''
His Dark Materials
''His Dark Materials'' is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of '' Northern Lights'' (1995; published as ''The Golden Compass'' in North America), '' The Subtle Knife'' (1997), and '' The Amber Spyglass'' (2000). It follo ...
'' by
Philip Pullman
Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy '' His Dark Materials'' and '' The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ'', a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, ''T ...
, which features an alternate-reality version of the university and was adapted for
film in 2007
The following is an overview of events in 2007 in film, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies and festivals, a list of films released and notable deaths. The highest-grossing film of the year was '' Pirates of the Caribbean: At ...
Zuleika Dobson
''Zuleika Dobson'', full title ''Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story'', is the only novel by English essayist Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford published in 1911. It includes the famous line "Death cancels all engageme ...
'' (1911) by
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturd ...
, a satire about undergraduate life.
* '' Sinister Street'' (1913–1914) by
Compton MacKenzie
Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie, (17 January 1883 – 30 November 1972) was a Scottish writer of fiction, biography, histories and a memoir, as well as a cultural commentator, raconteur and lifelong Scottish nationalist. He was one of th ...
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, a ''Bildungsroman'' (, plural ''Bildungsromane'', ) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is import ...
'' about two children born out of wedlock.
* ''
Gaudy Night
''Gaudy Night'' (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
The dons of Harriet Vane's '' alma mater'', the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on S ...
Somerville College
Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
, a
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries fo ...
mystery novel.
* The ''
Inspector Morse
Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse, GM, is the eponymous fictional character in the series of detective novels by British author Colin Dexter. On television, he appears in the 33-episode drama series '' Inspector Morse'' (1987–2000), ...
'' detective novels (1975–1999) by
Colin Dexter
Norman Colin Dexter (29 September 1930 – 21 March 2017) was an English crime writer known for his ''Inspector Morse'' series of novels, which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as an ITV television series, ''Inspector Morse'', fr ...
, adapted for television as ''Inspector Morse'' (1987–2000), the spin-off ''
Lewis
Lewis may refer to:
Names
* Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name
* Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname
Music
* Lewis (musician), Canadian singer
* "Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohead ...
'' (2006–2015), and the prequel '' Endeavour'' (2012–).
* '' True Blue'' (1996), a film about the mutiny at the time of the Oxford-Cambridge
Boat Race
Boat racing is a sport in which boats, or other types of watercraft, race on water. Boat racing powered by oars is recorded as having occurred in ancient Egypt, and it is likely that people have engaged in races involving boats and other wate ...
of 1987
* ''
The History Boys
''The History Boys'' is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where 185 performances were staged be ...
'' (2004) by
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his distinguished entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two ...
, alumnus of Exeter College, a play about a group of grammar school boys in
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...
Posh
Posh is an informal adjective for "upper class". It may also refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Posh'' (album), a 1980 album by Patrice Rushen
*" Posh!", a 1968 song from the musical ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang''
* ''Posh'' (2006 TV series), a 2006 Philip ...
'' (2010), a play by Laura Wade, and its film adaptation ''The Riot Club'' (2014), about a fictionalised equivalent of the Bullingdon Club.
* ''Testament of Youth (film), Testament of Youth'' (2014), a drama film based on the memoir of the Testament of Youth, same name written by Somerville College, Oxford, Somerville alumna
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain (29 December 1893 – 29 March 1970) was an English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir '' Testament of Youth'' recounted her experiences during the Fir ...
.
Notable non-fiction works on Oxford include ''Oxford'' by Jan Morris.
The university is parodied in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series with "Unseen University" and "Brazeneck College" (in reference to Brasenose College).
See also
* Academic scarf#University of Oxford, Academic scarves of the University of Oxford
* Gaudy celebrations
* List of medieval universities
* May Morning celebration
* Oxford "-er"
* Oxford bags
* Oxford comma
* Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA)
* Oxford University (UK Parliament constituency)
* Oxford University Police
* Town and gown
References
Citations
Sources
Histories
* Brock, Michael G., and Mark C. Curthoys, eds. ''The History of the University of Oxford Volumes 6 and 7: Nineteenth-Century'' (Oxford UP, 2000). vol 6 excerpt vol 7 excerpt *
* Brooke, Christopher and Roger Highfield, ''Oxford and Cambridge'', (Cambridge UP, 1988). heavily illustrated
* Catto, Jeremy (ed.), ''The History of the University of Oxford'', (Oxford UP, 1994).
* Clark, Andrew (ed.), ''The colleges of Oxford: their history and traditions'', Methuen & C. (London, 1891).
* Deslandes, Paul R. ''Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity & the Undergraduate Experience, 1850–1920'' (2005), 344pp
*
* Harrison, Brian Howard, ed. ''The History of the University of Oxford: Vol 8 The twentieth century'' (Oxford UP 1994).
* Hibbert, Christopher, ''The Encyclopaedia of Oxford'', Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan (Basingstoke, 1988).
* James Kelsey McConica, McConica, James. ''History of the University of Oxford. Vol. 3: The Collegiate University'' (1986), 775pp.
* Mallet, Charles Edward. ''A history of the University of Oxford: The mediæval university and the colleges founded in the Middle Ages'' (2 vol 1924)
* Midgley, Graham. ''University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford'' (1996) 192pp
* Simcock, Anthony V. ''The Ashmolean Museum and Oxford Science, 1683–1983'' (Museum of the History of Science, 1984).
* Sutherland, Lucy Stuart, Leslie G. Mitchell, and T. H. Aston, eds. ''The history of the University of Oxford'' (Clarendon, 1984).
Popular studies and collections
* Annan, Noel, ''The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses'' HarperCollins (London, 1999)
* Batson, Judy G., ''Oxford in Fiction'', Garland (New York, 1989).
* Betjeman, John, ''An Oxford University Chest'', Miles (London, 1938).
* Casson, Hugh, ''Hugh Casson's Oxford'', Phaidon (London, 1988).
* Dougill, John, ''Oxford in English Literature'', (U of Michigan Press, 1998).
* Feiler, Bruce, ''Looking for Class: Days and Nights at Oxford and Cambridge'', (2004).
* Fraser, Antonia (ed.), ''Oxford and Oxfordshire in Verse'', Penguin (London, 1983).
* R.W. Johnson, ''Look Back in Laughter: Oxford's Golden Postwar Age'', Threshold Press (2015).
* Kenny, Anthony & Kenny, Robert, ''Can Oxford be Improved?'', Imprint Academic (Exeter, 2007)
* Knight, William (ed.), ''The Glamour of Oxford'', (Blackwell, 1911).
* Miles, Jebb, ''The Colleges of Oxford'', Constable (London, 1992).
* Morris, Jan, ''The Oxford Book of Oxford'', (Oxford UP 2002).
* Pursglove, G. and A. Ricketts (eds.), ''Oxford in Verse'', Perpetua (Oxford, 1999).
* Seccombe, Thomas and H. Scott (eds.), ''In Praise of Oxford'' (2 vols.), Constable (London, 1912) v.1 * Snow, Peter, ''Oxford Observed'', John Murray (publishing house), John Murray (London, 1991).
Guide books
* Tames, Richard, ''A Traveller's History of Oxford'', Interlink (New York, 2002).
* Tyack, Geoffrey, ''Oxford: An Architectural Guide'', Oxford University Press (Oxford, 1998).
External links
*
'The University of Oxford', A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3: The University of Oxford (1954), pp. 1–38 *
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford, University Of
University of Oxford,
Russell Group
11th-century establishments in England, University of Oxford
Educational institutions established in the 11th century
Exempt charities, University of Oxford
Organisations based in Oxford with royal patronage, University of Oxford
Oxbridge, .Oxford, University of
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