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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 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 share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college.

It does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further 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 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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Selected article

The Principal and Fellows of Jesus College form the college's governing body. The Principal must be "a person distinguished for literary or scientific attainments, or for services in the work of education in the University or elsewhere", and has "pre-eminence and authority over all members of the College and all persons connected therewith". The Principal's Lodgings (entrance pictured) are in the first quadrangle of the college. The current Principal, Lord Krebs, was appointed in 2005 and is the 30th holder of the office. Professorial Fellows are those Professors and Readers of the university who are allocated to the college. One of these professorships is the Jesus Professor of Celtic, which is the only chair in Celtic studies at an English university. Official Fellows are those who hold tutorial or administrative appointments in the college. Past Official Fellows include the composer and musicologist John Caldwell, the historians Sir Goronwy Edwards and Niall Ferguson, the philosopher Galen Strawson and the political philosopher John Gray. There are also Senior and Junior Research Fellows. Principals and Fellows who retire can be elected as Emeritus Fellows. The college can also elect "distinguished persons" to Honorary Fellowships. (Full article...)

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James McCormack (1910–1975) was a United States Army officer and the first Director of Military Applications of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, McCormack also studied at Hertford College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After service in World War II, he was chosen in 1947 as the Director of Military Applications of the Atomic Energy Commission. He took a pragmatic approach to handling the issue of the proper agency to hold custody of the nuclear weapons stockpile, and supported Edward Teller's development of thermonuclear weapons. He was appointed Director of Nuclear Applications at the Air Research and Development Center in 1952, later becoming Deputy Commander of the Air Research and Development Command. After retiring from the military in 1955, McCormack became the first head of the Institute for Defense Analysis, a non-profit research organization. In 1958 he became vice president for industrial and governmental relations at MIT, and originated a proposal for a new space agency, which eventually became NASA. (Full article...)

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Selected college or hall

St Benet's Hall is one of the Permanent Private Halls (PPHs) of the University of Oxford. Unlike the colleges, which are run by their Fellows, PPHs are run by an outside institution – in the case of St Benet's, Ampleforth Abbey. Established in 1897, it was the first Benedictine foundation in Oxford since the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century. Historically its principal function was to allow Benedictine monks to study at Oxford, but nowadays most members are lay undergraduates and there is no requirement that students should be Catholics. It became a PPH in 1918, when it was named after Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the Benedictine order. It is the last Oxford institution to admit only men for undergraduate degrees: women are admitted for postgraduate study, and will be admitted as undergraduates when new housing facilities are obtained. Until 2012, the Master of St Benet's had always been a Benedictine monk; the current Master is Werner Jeanrond, a lay Catholic theologian. Alumni include Cardinal Basil Hume, the philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, the politician Damian Collins and the England rugby international Simon Halliday. (Full article...)

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Selected image

Credit: Brett Arnold

The chapel of Mansfield College. It opened in 1886 as the first non-conformist college in Oxford, although it only achieved full college status in 1995.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that the Indian Institute (pictured) in central Oxford was founded by Sir Monier Monier-Williams in 1883 to provide training for the Indian Civil Service?
... that sports car racer, yachtsman and rower Robert Hichens was also the most highly decorated officer of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War?
... that Daniel Ernst Jablonski in the 1690s tried to bring about a union between Lutheran and Calvinist Protestants?
... that the English historian Sir Raymond Carr was knighted for services to History in the New Year Honours List, 1987?
... that John Percival, when headmaster of Rugby School, gained the nickname "Percival of the knees" because he was concerned about "impurity" and insisted that boys secure their football shorts below the knee with elastic?

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Selected quotation

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A Fellowship at All Souls is now one of the greatest honours the University can bestow, it is the equivalent (and in the opinion of the Fellows, more than the equivalent) of being a Fellow of Kings at Cambridge, it entitles the recipient to the centre page should he send a letter to The Times – The Times is sometimes called the All Souls Parish Magazine – it absolves him from unnecessary truck with undergraduates: safe in the knowledge that he is surrounded by nothing but first-class brains, the All Souls Fellow may devote himself with passion to that research to which the University has called him.

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— John Betjeman

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Selected panorama

Credit: David Iliff

A 360-degree view of the main quadrangle of Keble College. Designed by the 19th-century architect William Butterfield, the buildings have attracted considerable praise and criticism for their use of bricks in various colours and patterns, in contrast to the older stone-clad colleges elsewhere in the city.

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