Portal:University of Oxford
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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research 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 prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. When disputes erupted between students and the Oxford townspeople, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.
The University of Oxford comprises 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges, four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter). and a range of academic departments that are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university that controls its own membership and has its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. Oxford does not have a main campus. Its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre and around the town. Undergraduate teaching at the university consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.
Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2024, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.05 billion, of which £778.9 million was from research grants and contracts. In 2024, Oxford ranked first nationally for undergraduate education.
Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2022,[update] 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford. Its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to a number of scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world. (Full article...)
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The Boat Race, also known as the "University Boat Race" and "The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race", is a rowing race between Oxford University Boat Club and Cambridge University Boat Club each spring on the River Thames in London. The course (map pictured), which is 4 miles 374 yards long (6,779 metres), runs from Putney to Mortlake, passing Hammersmith and Barnes. The clubs' presidents toss a coin before the race for the right to choose which side of the river (station) they will row on: the north station ("Middlesex") has the advantage of the first and last bends, and the south ("Surrey") station the longer middle bend. Members of both teams are traditionally known as "blues" and each boat as a "Blue Boat", with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford dark blue. The first race was in 1829 and it has been held annually since 1856, with the exception of the two world wars. The 2012 race was won by Cambridge, after an interruption by a protestor swimming across the river into the path of the boats. As of 2014 Cambridge have won the race 81 times and Oxford 78 times, with one dead heat. The event is a popular one, not only with the alumni of the universities, but also with rowers in general and the public. (Full article...)
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Robert Winchelsey (c. 1245– 1313) was an English Christian theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury. He studied at the universities of Paris and Oxford, and later taught at both. Influenced by Thomas Aquinas, he was a scholastic theologian. Winchelsey held various benefices in England, and was the Chancellor of Oxford University before being elected to Canterbury in early 1293. Although he initially had the support of Edward I, Winchelsey later became a forceful opponent of the king. The archbishop was encouraged by the papacy to resist Edward's attempts to tax the clergy. Winchelsey was also an opponent of the king's treasurer Walter Langton as well as other clergy. On one occasion he rebuked an abbot so sternly that the abbot suffered a fatal heart attack. Following the election of a former royal clerk as Pope Clement V in 1305, the king was able to secure the archbishop's exile that same year. Upon the succession of Edward's son, Edward II, Winchelsey was allowed to return to England after the new king petitioned the pope to allow his return. Winchelsey soon joined the king's enemies, however, and was the only bishop to object to the return of the king's favourite, Piers Gaveston. Winchelsey died in 1313. Although miracles were alleged to have happened at his tomb, an attempt to have him declared a saint was unsuccessful. (Full article...)
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Somerville College (on Woodstock Road to the north of the city centre) was established as "Somerville Hall" in 1879 and took its present name in 1894. One of the first colleges for women at Oxford, it is named after Mary Somerville, a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who died in 1872. It was founded as a college "in which no distinction will be made between students on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations", in contrast to Lady Margaret Hall which was an Anglican institution. In 1992, Somerville's statutes were amended to make it a mixed sex college; the first male fellows were appointed in 1993, with the first male students admitted in 1994. About half of the approximately 400 undergraduates and 90 postgraduates are men. Alumni include the politicians Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Shirley Williams, the novelists Vera Brittain, A. S. Byatt and Iris Murdoch, and the scientists Dorothy Hodgkin and Kay Davies. (Full article...)
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Did you know
Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:
- ... that Clement, Bishop of Dunblane, (pictured) was the first Dominican friar to obtain a bishopric in the British Isles?
- ... that Sir William Fortescue was prompted to become a barrister by the death of his wife?
- ... that one of Bodley's Librarians at Oxford had been in the King's African Rifles, another wrote about French anarchy, another had sixteen siblings, another used boys for routine library tasks, and another later died of a "surfeit of cherries"?
- ... that Lord Nolan was the first chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life?
- ... that Welsh lawyer Edward Wynne was, in 1714, the first landowner to grow turnips on Anglesey?
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On this day
Events for 11 August relating to the university, its colleges, academics and alumni. College affiliations are marked in brackets.
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