OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Oxford University has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the UNIVERSITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the aeternitas and the future of Europe.

	FOUNDATION
Year	1096 A.D..
City	Oxford
Founder	Students
Where	Kingdom of England
Originary subjects	logic , physis , phylosophy , rhetoric

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	NOWADAYS
State	United kingdom
Name	University of Oxford (Oxford University)
Seates	Oxford county
Degree programs	every scientific and humaninties disciplines
Library	YES internal (Bodleian Libraries, Oxford Press)
Collegium	43 inside (University , Balliol , Merton , Kellogg , the Queen's , Trinity)
Alumni	Oxford Alumni groups
Famous teachers	Theobald of Étampes , Gerald of Wales , Emo of Friesland , William of Durham , Duns Scotus , William of Ockham , Roger Bacon , John Balliol Sr. , Walter de Merton , Erasmus , William Grocyn , Robert Boyle , Robert Hooke , John Locke, Thomas Hobbes , William Harvey , Edmund Halley , John Wilkins , Edward Gibbon , Sir Spencer Walpole , Arnold Toynbee , John Ruskin , Lewis Carroll , J.R.R. Tolkien
Famous scholars	Sir John Fortescue , John Wyclif (Wycliffe) , Sir Walter Raleigh , Sir Thomas More , John Wesley , Adam Smith , William Penn , Sir Richard Lovelace , Oscar Wilde , Henry Pelham , Lord North , Earl of Liverpool , Sir Robert Peel , Earl of Derby , William Ewart Gladstone , Marquess of Salisbury , Margaret Thatcher , Tony Blair , David Cameron
Awards	76 Nobel Prizes, 4 Fields Medalists, 6 Turing Award winners, Alumni won 160 Olympic medals

How old is the University of Oxford? It is a unique and historic institution, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, it can lay claim to nine centuries of continuous existence even if there is no clear date of foundation but teaching existed at Oxford in some form in 1096 A.D.. Everything began with the Paris ban' of 1167 A.D., when Henry II king of England banned English students from attending the University of Paris, following a quarrel with Thomas Becket archibishop of Canterbury. Some years later the historian Gerald of Wales gave a public reading to the assembled Oxford dons (university lecturers, especially at Oxford or Cambridge), as royal clerk to the king and 2 archbishops who travelled widely and wrote extensively, that called 2 years after the arrival of Emo of Friesland, the first known overseas student at Oxford University in motion the University’s tradition of developing international scholarly links.

Since 1201 A.D. Oxford University was headed by a magister scholarum Oxonie (head of the ecclesiastical school) on whom the title of Chancellor was later conferred and in 1231 A.D. the Masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation. During 13th century, rioting between townspeople and students hastened the establishment of primitive halls of residence, succeeded by the first of Oxford’s Colleges as endowed houses or medieval halls of residence under the supervision of a Master: among them, established since middle of the century University, Balliol and Merton Colleges are the oldest within Oxford University. Less than a century later, Oxford had achieved eminence above every other european seat of learning and won the praises of popes, kings and sages by virtue of its antiquity, curriculum, doctrine and privileges. So happened in 1355 A.D. that king Edward III paid tribute to the University of Oxford for its invaluable contribution to learning, also commenting on the services rendered to the state by the distinguished Oxford graduates.

But early on, Oxford University became a centre for lively controversy with scholars involved in religious and political disputes: so John Wyclif, a 14th-century Master of Balliol, campaigned for a Bible in English against the wishes of the papacy, while two centuries after the king Henry VIII forced the University of Oxford to accept his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the Anglican churchmen Cranmer Latimer and Ridley were later tried for heresy and burnt at the stake in the city. Then Oxford University kept for Royalist party during the Civil War and king Charles I held a counter-Parliament in the University’s Convocation House, so in the late XVII century the Oxford University philosopher John Locke, suspected of treason, was forced to flee the country.

The 18th century has been an era of scientific discovery and religious revival originated in Oxford University: Edmond Halley, a professor of geometry, predicted the return of the comet that bears his name; John and Charles Wesley’s prayer meetings laid the foundations for the Methodist Society; from 1833 A.D. the Oxford Movement sought to revitalise the Catholic aspects of the Anglican Church and one of its leaders; John Henry Newman became a Roman Catholic and was later made a Cardinal (canonised as a saint in XX century); in 1860 A.D. the new University Museum was the scene of a famous debate between Thomas Huxley, champion of evolution, and the Bishop Wilberforce; from 1878 A.D. new academic halls were established for women, who were admitted as full members of Oxford University from the Twenties while only in 1986 A.D. all of male colleges had changed their statutes to admit women. Starting from the XX century, University of Oxford established major new research capacities in the natural and applied sciences, including medicine, so doing has enhanced and strengthened its traditional role as an international focus for learning and a forum for intellectual debate.

Oxford University operates the Ashmolean Museum (the world's oldest university museum), the Oxford University Press (the largest university press in the world) and the Library University of Oxford (the largest academic library system nationwide). Its graduate admissions are severe because Oxford University offers a unique experience to students, including the opportunity to work with leading academics and with world-class libraries, laboratories, museums and collections. The Research courses are focused on a specific area of research throughout the course, working with an academic supervisor who will oversee the students, also known as postgraduate research or PGR courses: Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil), Doctoral training programmes (CDTs and DTPs), Master of Science (MSc), Combined Master of Science (MSc) and Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil). The Open university for students of whole Earth provided of U.K. qualifications and each individual course shows the level of English language proficiency required for the course.

Oxford University is ranked as first in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings from 2017 A.D. until today, a record of nine consecutive years! There are more than 26,000 students, including 12,470 undergraduates and 13,920 postgraduates, hosted at the University Parks 70-acre parkland area in the northeast of the city, near Keble College, Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall. It is open to the public during daylight hours. There are also various college-owned open spaces open to the public, including Bagley Wood and most notably Christ Church Meadow. The Botanic Garden on the High Street is the oldest botanic garden in the country and contains over 8,000 different plant species on 1.8 ha, one of the most diverse yet compact major collections of plants in the world including representatives of over 90% of the higher plant families.

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You cannot talk about Oxford without its twin rival Cambridge University seated few kilometers far from it. The rapid grow of Oxford University, thanks to the king concessions of privileges to scholars and students, called stragers from every side of Europe who inevitably had riots often with the inhabitants of the little village. The arrogance of the students, became real dominus of that place, brough to robberies and killings so that in 1209 A.D. 2 scholars who had killed a woman were condamned and executed, with the beneplacitum of king John II. This act pushed student corpus to a revolt that suspended the didactical activities, followed by war against the Oxford residents who in the end forced students to escape away: a group of them moved to the near Cambridge village where they founded the second anglosaxon university of history. That private institute was inmediately reconognized by the royal auctority and in 1231 A.D. king Henry III assigned to Cambridge University statal funds and tax exemptions, regolating the village life to avoid what happened in Oxford. A successive bull of Pope Gregorio IX gave permession to Cambridge graduates to teach in every christian country: since then all the universities became public institution and during the Reinassance epoch were eleved as instruments at service of the public power and sovereings. A classical example has been the University of Cambridge, whose Christ Church College was rebuilt by king Henry VIII when became head of the Angligan Church. This situation continued until early XX century when still 10-20% of the administrative managers of France, Prussia, Italy, Russia and Great Britain came from Universities. Actually, in XVII century king Jacob I conceeded a representance of Oxford and Cambridge universities to sit in Parliament, while for next two centuries the oldest democratic assembly in Europe hosted parlamentarian before nominated and elected by the english and scotts colleges.

Prior the Cambridge University foundation, the village and the area surrounding had already developed scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation due largely to the intellectual and academic contributions of monks from the nearby Ely Cathedral. Oxford University scholars began leaving it for more hospitable cities, including Paris, Reading and Cambridge and by 1225 A.D. the chancellor of the University of Cambridge was appointed and writs issued by the King, who established a panel of 2 masters and 2 townsmen to determine these: then, Cambridge school was described as a studium generale in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV and confirmed as such by Pope John XXII's 1318 A.D. papal bull, becaming common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or give lectures. The Cambridge University's first college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284 A.D. by Hugh de Balsham, the Bishop of Ely. A century later, the university put itself at the centre of a Protestant schism: many nobles, intellectuals and also commoners saw the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church and felt that it was being used by The Crown to usurp the counties' rightful powers. Then, East Anglia emerged as the centre of what ultimately became the Puritan movement and at Cambridge University that movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's Colleges. With the University of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1571 A.D. was buried the 'regius professor of Divinity' Martin Bucero.

The Cambridge University quickly established itself as a global leader in the study of mathematics. From the epoch of Isaac Newton in late 17th century until the mid-19th century, that university maintained an especially strong emphasis on applied mathematical physics. Students awarded first class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos exam are called 'wranglers', and the top student among them is known as the Senior Wrangler, a position that has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain", such as some of the most famous names in British science including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and Lord Rayleigh, while Edmund Plowden was lawyer and teacher at the University of Cambridge. That includes 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties and other institutions organised into 6 schools: the largest department is the Cambridge University Press and Assessment, which contains the oldest university press in the world! The university operates 8 cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Cambridge's 116 libraries hold a total of approximately 16 million books, around 9 million of which are in the Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library and one of the world's largest academic libraries. Nobel prizes have been awarded to 126 Cambridge alumni, academics and affiliates. Among the university's notable alumni are 194 Olympic medal-winning athletes and others, such as Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, Rajiv Gandhi, John Harvard, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, John Milton, Vladimir Nabokov, Jawaharlal Nehru, Isaac Newton, Sylvia Plath, Bertrand Russell, Alan Turing and Ludwig Wittgenstein have been scholars.

The University of Cambridge academics include: economists such as John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall, Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen; philosophers group Sir Francis Bacon, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, Karl Popper, Bernard Williams and G. E. Moore; notable alumni historians have been Thomas Babington Macaulay, Frederic William Maitland, Lord Acton, E. H. Carr, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Rhoda Dorsey, E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Karl Schweizer. Many writers have studied at this atheneum such as the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, his fellow University Wits, Thomas Nashe and Robert Greene, the first professional authors in England. Within poetry, the University of Cambridge alumni include the poet Edmund Spenser, the metaphysical poets John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and John Milton, the Restoration poet and playwright John Dryden, the pre-romantic poets Thomas Gray and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, later Romantics including Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson.

Isaac Newton, who conducted many of his experiments on the grounds of the Trinity College, ranks among the most famous University of Cambridge alumni. Other were the mathematicians John Dee, Brook Taylor, G. H. Hardy, Mary Cartwright, Augustus De Morgan, Sir William Oughtred, inventor of the logarithmic scale, John Wallis, first to explain the law of acceleration, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius who made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions, until James Clerk Maxwell, who brought about the second great unification of physics (the first being accredited to Newton) with his classical theory of electromagnetic radiation. In biology, University of Cambridge alumni include: Charles Darwin, famous for developing the theory of natural selection and explaining evolution; Francis Crick and James Watson who developed the model explaining the three-dimensional structure of DNA while working at the Cavendish Laboratory; Maurice Wilkins and especially Rosalind Franklin produced key X-ray crystallography data, which was shared with Watson, who won the Nobel Prize all together. Cambridge University is widely considered the birthplace of the computer, as the opera of the mathematician Charles Babbage, while the alumnus Alan Turing devised the basis for modern computing and Maurice Wilkes created the first programmable computer. In physics, Ernest Rutherford regarded as the father of nuclear physics spent much of his life at the university, where he worked closely with E. J. Williams and Niels Bohr, a major contributor to the understanding of the atom, J.J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron, James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, and John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, responsible for first splitting the atom. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, also studied under Rutherford and Thomson.

Other significant Cambridge University alumni in science include: Henry Cavendish, who discovered hydrogen, Frank Whittle, co-inventor of the jet engine; William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), who formulated the original Laws of Thermodynamics; William Fox Talbot, who invented the camera; Alfred North Whitehead, the Einstein's major opponent; Jagadish Chandra Bose, one of the fathers of radio science; Lord Rayleigh, who made extensive contributions to both theoretical and experimental physics in the 20th century; Georges Lemaître, who first proposed the Big Bang theory. At least nine monarchs, including Kings Edward VII, George VI and (current King) Charles III of the United Kingdom, King Peter II of Yugoslavia, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Sofía of Spain studied at the Cambridge University, that had also educated a large number of royals, including Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. At least, notable alumni in religion include: Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and his predecessors, William Tyndale, the biblical translator; Benjamin Whichcote and the Cambridge Platonists, William Paley, the Christian philosopher known primarily for formulating the teleological argument for the existence of God; William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, largely responsible for the abolition of the slave trade; Evangelical churchman Charles Simeon; John William Colenso, the bishop of Natal who interpreted Scripture and its relations with native peoples that seemed dangerously radical at the time; John Bainbridge Webster and David F. Ford, theologians.

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