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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 first Honorary Fellows of Keble College, Oxford, were elected in 1931, when the college's governing body was given power to elect "distinguished persons" to this position. Under the current statutes of the college, Honorary Fellows cannot vote at meetings of the Governing Body and do not receive financial reward, but they receive "such other privileges as the Governing Body may determine." Those elected have included college alumni (for example, the Pakistan cricketer and politician Imran Khan, elected 1988), benefactors (for example Sir Anthony O'Reilly, elected 2002), and individuals of distinction without academic links to the college such as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan (pictured) (elected 1994) and the poet Sir John Betjeman (elected 1972). The three longest-serving Honorary Fellows are Sir John Forsdyke (Principal Librarian of the British Museum; appointed 1937, died 1979), Sir Thomas Armstrong (conductor; appointed 1955, died 1994) and Harry Carpenter (Warden of Keble, later Bishop of Oxford; appointed 1960, died 1993). (Full article...)
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Christ Church (sometimes known as "The House" from its Latin name, Ædes Christi , or "House of Christ") is one of the largest Oxford colleges, and is also the site of the cathedral church of the Diocese of Oxford, namely Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The college can trace its history from 1525, when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey suppressed the Abbey of St Frideswide in Oxford and founded Cardinal College; he fell from favour before it was completed. King Henry VIII refounded it as King Henry VIII's College in 1532, and then (after the break from the Roman Catholic Church) as Christ Church in 1546, making it the cathedral of the new Oxford diocese as well. The buildings also include Tom Tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren, where "Great Tom" rings 101 times every night. Christ Church has produced thirteen British prime ministers, the two most recent being Anthony Eden (1955–57) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963–64). The college is the setting for parts of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Carroll was a Fellow of the college and taught mathematics. Christ Church has been used in the filming of the movies of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel Northern Lights. (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 before Charles Aitken installed electric lighting, the Tate Gallery (pictured) was cleared of visitors on dark and foggy days?
- ... that in 1964 J. N. L. Baker, Bursar of Jesus College, became the first member of the university to hold the post of Lord Mayor of Oxford?
- ... that although George Bernard Shaw called fellow Edwardian playwright St John Hankin's death "a public calamity," his work was largely neglected until the 1990s?
- ... that "many-sided" priest Father Patrick McLaughlin promoted links between the church and the world of literature by staging plays, and by commissioning lectures from T. S. Eliot and Dorothy L. Sayers?
- ... that in 1612 Jewish teacher Jacob Barnet was arrested and imprisoned by officials of the university for changing his mind about being baptized?
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