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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, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where, in 1209, they established 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 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 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 31 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 history of Brasenose College starts in 1509 when the college was founded on the site of Brasenose Hall by Richard Sutton and Bishop William Smyth. Its name is believed to derive from a bronze knocker (replica pictured) on the hall's door. The library and chapel were completed in the mid-seventeenth century, despite continuing financial problems. Under William Cleaver (Principal 1785–1809), the college began to be populated by gentlemen, its income doubled and academic success was considerable. New Quad was built between 1886 and 1911. Under Edward Hartopp Cradock Brasenose's academic record waned but it excelled at cricket and rowing; the reverse occurred under Charles Buller Heberden. Brasenose lost 115 men in the First World War and Lord Curzon's post-War reforms were successfully instituted. Sporting achievements again came at the cost of falling academic standards and finances. The 1970s saw the admission of women beginning in 1974, more post-graduate attendees and fewer domestic staff. Law and Philosophy, Politics and Economics were strong subjects under Principals Barry Nicholas and Herbert Hart) and the fellowship of Vernon Bogdanor. (Full article...)

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Bernard Bosanquet (1877–1937) was an English cricketer. He is best-known for inventing the googly, a delivery designed to deceive the batsman. When bowled, it appears to be a leg break, but after pitching the ball turns in the opposite direction to that which is expected, behaving as an off break instead. Bosanquet played cricket for Eton College and whilst at Oriel College, Oxford. He played with moderate success as a batsman who bowled at fast-medium pace for Oxford University between 1898 and 1900. While playing a tabletop game, Bosanquet devised a new technique for delivering a ball, later christened the "googly", which he steadily practised during his time at Oxford. He then played first-class cricket for Middlesex. Having gone on several minor overseas tours, Bosanquet was selected in 1903 for the Marylebone Cricket Club tour of Australia. During that tour, he made his Test debut for England and although his batting was unsuccessful, he did well as a bowler and troubled all the opposing batsmen. He appeared in seven Test matches for England as an all-rounder. He was chosen as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1905. (more...)

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Wadham College, in the centre of the city on Parks Road, was founded in 1610 by Dorothy Wadham, using money that her husband Nicholas had bequeathed for the establishment of an Oxford college. The main quadrangle was designed by William Arnold and constructed between 1610 and 1613, and includes a statue of King James I (in whose reign the college was founded). The hall, one of the largest in Oxford, has a hammer-beam roof and Jacobean woodwork. The grounds include large gardens, the Holywell Music Room, dating from 1748, and more modern buildings used for accommodation and teaching. The original rules that no women were to enter the premises apart from a laundress who was "above suspicion" were gradually relaxed, and women were admitted as students in 1974. The college traditionally has a left-wing ethos. Alumni include the conductor Thomas Beecham, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, the politician Michael Foot and Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury. (Full article...)

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Credit: Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896)

John Henry Newman, a student at Trinity College and then a fellow of Oriel College, was a leading religious figure in the 19th century; he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.

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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 Laura Spence Affair was a major UK political row started over comments made by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (pictured) accusing Oxford of elitism?
... that in his first murder case, real estate and divorce laws specialist Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence saved suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams from being hanged?
... that former Anglican clergyman and Liberal Party life peer Tim Beaumont was the only Green Party representative in the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1999 until his death in 2008?
... that Kenneth Woollcombe, a former Bishop of Oxford, was a member of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved when it granted a faculty for the controversial altar by Henry Moore?
... that despite being personal secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Francis Charles Lawley's attempts at insider trading resulted in losses?

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If the Victorians can be said to have rampaged, they did so to greatest effect in the few acres of Oxford beside and immediately south of the University parks... There is Keble College, red brick sprawling so copiously that one feels the stuff must have got out of control, unleashing some dark force upon a helpless architect. Or the houses that survive as tenacious Gothic islands amid the concrete cliffs of the new University Departments.

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— Penelope Lively, from The House in Norham Gardens

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