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 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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The buildings of Nuffield College are to the west of Oxford's city centre, on the former site of the largely disused basin of the Oxford Canal. Nuffield College was founded in 1937 after a donation to the University of Oxford by the car manufacturer Lord Nuffield. The initial designs of the architect Austen Harrison, which were heavily influenced by Mediterranean architecture, were rejected by Nuffield, who described them as "un-English". Harrison then aimed for "something on the lines of Cotswold domestic architecture", as Nuffield wanted. The college was built to the revised plans between 1949 and 1960. During construction, the tower, about 150 feet (46 m) tall, was redesigned to hold the college's library. Reaction to the architecture has been largely unfavourable. It has been described as "Oxford's biggest monument to barren reaction" and "a hodge-podge from the start". However, the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner thought that the tower helped the Oxford skyline and predicted that it would "one day be loved". The writer Simon Jenkins doubted Pevsner's prediction, though, saying that "vegetation" was the "best hope" for the tower, and for the rest of the college too. (Full article...)

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Davis Tarwater (born 1984) is an American swimmer who won gold at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London for his contributions in the heats of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay. He grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began competitive swimming at age seven. During high school, he set three state swimming records and was named High School Swimmer of the Year in 2002. He attended the University of Michigan, where he was a three-time NCAA national champion and won a Big Ten Medal of Honor for being the school's top student-athlete. Tarwater has represented the United States in the World Championships three times, winning a gold medal as part of the 4×200-meter freestyle relay team in 2009. He has won three individual and five relay national titles, and set an American record in the 200-meter butterfly in 2011. In 2004, 2008 and 2012, he narrowly missed making the Olympic team in the 200-meter butterfly. After failing to make the Olympic team in 2008, he retired from swimming and obtained a Master's degree in Latin American Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford, returning to swimming full-time in 2010. (Full article...)

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Green Templeton College is the newest college of the university, having been formed in 2008 from the merger of Green College and Templeton College (the first merger of two colleges in the modern history of Oxford). It is located on Woodstock Road to the north of the city centre, on the former site of Green College, and its buildings include the 18th-century Radcliffe Observatory. The college is for postgraduate studies only, with about 500 students; the Principal is the historian Colin Bundy. Green College, established in 1979 and named after the benefactor Cecil H. Green, had a focus on medicine, education, the environment and social sciences. Templeton College, founded in 1965 as the Oxford Centre for Management Studies and renamed in 1983 as a result of a donation from Sir John Templeton, concentrated on management and business studies. The college's coat of arms combines elements from its two predecessors – the Rod of Aesculapius (medicine) for Green and the Nautilus shell (evolution and renewal) for Templeton. The crest on the coat of arms displays a representation of the transit of Venus across the sun, since the 1769 transit led to the construction of the Observatory. (Full article...)

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Credit: David Iliff

The Clarendon Building, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, was built between 1711 and 1715 to house the Oxford University Press. It is now part of the Bodleian Library.

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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 Oxford University Museum of Natural History (pictured) was the site of a major debate in evolutionary biology?
... that despite being appointed to the usually profitable post of comptroller to Prince Charles in 1616, John Vaughan, 1st Earl of Carbery later claimed that serving the Prince had cost him £20,000?
... that Anglican clergyman Chad Varah founded the Samaritans, the world's first crisis hotline, in 1953, at a time when he was also writing for the Eagle comic?
... that British barrister Sir Tony Hetherington was the first head of the Crown Prosecution Service after it was founded in 1986?
... that the Welshmen Edward Edwards, Griffith Griffith, Owen Owen, Richard Richards, Robert Roberts and Thomas Thomas (and his son Thomas Thomas) were all educated at Jesus College?

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“

I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.

”

— Winifred Mary Letts, "The Spires of Oxford" (1916)

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