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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 43 colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous constituent 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 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. The university 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 blade colours of Jesus College Boat Club

Jesus College Boat Club, the rowing club for members of Jesus College, was formed in 1835. Rowing at the college predates the club's foundation, as a boat from Jesus was involved in the earliest recorded races between college crews at Oxford in 1815, when it competed against a crew from Brasenose College. In the early years of rowing at Oxford, Jesus was one of the few colleges that participated in races. A number of college members have rowed for Oxford against Cambridge in the Boat Race and the Women's Boat Race. Barney Williams, a Canadian rower who studied at the college, won a silver medal in rowing at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and participated in the Boat Race in 2005 and 2006. Other students who rowed while at the college have achieved success in other fields, including John Sankey, who became Lord Chancellor, and Alwyn Williams, who became Bishop of Durham. The college boathouse, which is shared with Keble College's boat club, dates from 1964 and replaced a moored barge used by spectators and crew-members. (Full article...)

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Richard Dawkins (born 1941) is a British biological theorist with a background in ethology. He is a popular science author focusing on evolution. He came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution. In 1982, he developed this view in The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection, emphasizing that the phenotypic effects of genes are not necessarily limited to an organism's body but can stretch via biochemistry and behaviour into other organisms and the environment. Dawkins is a prominent critic of religion, creationism and pseudoscience. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described a dysteleological perspective on the process of evolution by natural selection as "blind", without a design or a goal. In his 2006 million-selling book The God Delusion, he contended that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist, writing that such beliefs, based on faith rather than on evidence, qualify as a delusion. Dawkins retired from his position at Oxford University in 2008. (more...)

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Nuffield College, to the west of the city centre, was founded in 1937 by the car manufacturer and philanthropist Lord Nuffield. He gave the site to the university and £900,000 (approximately £246M in modern terms) to build and endow the college. His intention had been to establish a college for engineering and business methods, but he was persuaded to let the money be used for a social sciences college instead – a decision that he sometimes later regretted, although he was sufficiently pleased with the college to leave it the bulk of his estate in his will. Construction began in 1949 and was finished in 1960, to a design by Austen Harrison. The main tower, about 150 feet (46 m) tall, holds the library and is a noted Oxford landmark. Nuffield is an all-graduate college (and was Oxford's first college for postgraduates only), primarily for research in economics, politics and sociology; there are about 75 students and 60 Fellows (many holding university posts), headed by the economist Andrew Dilnot as Warden. Former students include Kofi Abrefa Busia (former Prime Minister of Ghana), the British politician Patricia Hewitt, and the economist Robert Skidelsky. (Full article...)

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Credit: Jorgeroyan

The Fellows' Library of Jesus College dates from 1679 but some of the bookcases are even older. John Betjeman called it "one of the best little-known sights of Oxford".

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Did you know

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

... that Charles Ranken (pictured) and Lord Randolph Churchill founded the Oxford University Chess Club in April 1869, with Ranken becoming its first president?
... that John Verney became a Member of Parliament to gain contacts to help him in his career as a barrister?
... that W. G. Collingwood, John Ruskin's secretary and assistant, was a noted scholar of Norse history and art?
... that Rabbi Asher Lopatin supported a Chicago ban on foie gras on the grounds that the Torah prohibits cruelty to animals, noting that "chopped liver is good, but foie gras is bad"?
... that Alexander Wilkinson managed to play 74 more first-class cricket matches despite an injured hand that almost had to be amputated after World War I?

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“

And that sweet City with her dreaming spires
She needs not June for beauty's heightening

”

— Matthew Arnold, describing the view of Oxford from Boars Hill

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Selected panorama

Credit: Bencherlite

A panoramic view of the First Quadrangle of Jesus College. The hall is in the centre (at the west of the quadrangle), on the right-hand of the passageway leading through into the Second Quadrangle, and lit by three large windows. The Principal's Lodgings are on the north side of the quadrangle, between the hall and the chapel.

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