Wolfson College, Oxford

Oxford_College_Infobox
name = Wolfson College
university = Oxford
picture =
colours =
named_for = Sir Isaac Wolfson, Bt., FRS
established = 1965
motto = "Humani nil alienum" ("Homo sum, humani nil alienum a me puto") (A quote from the Roman playwright Terence: I am a human being and I consider nothing that concerns human beings alien to me

sister_college = Darwin College, Cambridge
head_name = President Elect
head = Professor Hermione Lee
JCR President = none (graduate-only college)
undergraduates = none (graduate-only college)
graduates = 614 (2008)
latitude =
longitude =
homepage = [http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/ Homepage]
boat_club = [http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clubs/boatclub/ Boatclub]

Wolfson College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Quietly located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with over sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and junior research fellows. It also caters to a wide range of subjects, from the humanities to the social and natural sciences.

The diversity of the college is reflected in its deeply international character and vibrant student body. Perhaps reflecting this, the college is home to Oxford's Centre for Korean Studies, and the International Association of Tibetan Studies. It is also home to the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, which has lately moved to an independent location in the city. As of 2008, the college had 614 students, 454 of whom were DPhils. The remainder were studying for the MPhil, MSc, MSc by Research, MSt, MSt by Research, MBA, EMBA, MLitt, MLitt by Research, BPhil, and Cert degrees. The college does not accept MJur or LLB candidates.

Owning land on both sides of the River Cherwell, Wolfson is also one of the few Oxford colleges with its own punting harbour, with a well maintained fleet of punts for use by all members of the college community.

The current acting president of Wolfson College is Jon Stallworthy, a noted poet and literary critic and Fellow of the British Academy and Royal Society of Literature. He will be succeeded in October 2008 by Hermione Lee.

As of 2006, the college had a financial endowment of £33.5 million. [ [http://www.btinternet.com/~akme/OXCpress.html Oxford College Endowment Incomes, 1973-2006] (updated July 2007)]

History and character

Wolfson's first president Sir Isaiah Berlin, the influential political philosopher and historian of ideas, was instrumental to the college's founding in 1965. The college began its existence with the name Iffley College, which offered a new community for graduate students at Oxford, particularly in natural and social sciences. Twelve other colleges of the university provided grants to make the establishment of Iffley possible but as of 1965, the college had no president nor even a building. Berlin set out to change this, eventually securing support from the Wolfson Foundation and Ford Foundation in 1966 to establish a separate college site. Isaac Wolfson's contribution was recognized with the college's name change to Wolfson College.

But Berlin was not done. Named the college's first president in 1967, Berlin envisioned Wolfson to be a centre of academic excellence but, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, also bound it to a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos.cite book | last = Ignatieff | first = Michael | title = Isaiah Berlin: A Life | publisher = Penguin Books | date = 2000 | id = ISBN 0-14-026857-x ] In Berlin's words, the college would be 'new, untrammelled and unpyramided'.cite book | last = Ignatieff | first = Michael | title = Isaiah Berlin: A Life | publisher = Penguin Books | date = 2000 | id = ISBN 0-14-026857-x ]

His ideals were largely achieved. Wolfson is perhaps the most egalitarian college at Oxford, with few barriers between students and fellows. There is no high table, only one common room for all the members of the college, and gowns are worn only on special occasions. Graduate students serve on the college's governing body and participate in General Meetings. Berlin's reputation presence in the early years also helped shape the intellectual character of the college, attracting many distinguished fellows like Niko Tinbergen, who won a Nobel Prize for his studies in animal behavior in 1973. Berlin's own prominence in the humanities helped attract many graduate students like Henry Hardy, interested in political philosophy and the history of ideas.cite book | last = Ignatieff | first = Michael | title = Isaiah Berin: A Life | publisher = Penguin Books | date = 2000 | id = ISBN 0-14-026857-x ]

Library

The college library, which occupies both the floors of one wing of the college's main building, has the main library on the first floor, approachable from the side of the dinning hall and the lodge, and two other collections, called the Floersheimer Room and the Hornik Memorial Room on the ground floor. A mezzanine floor in the main library has books as well as carrels for individual use of graduate students of the college. The library has already emerged as an extensive collection of books and journals.

Buildings and grounds

The college has one of the most modern buildings of all the Oxford colleges, and is well located by the river Cherwell. Built in 1974, the college building has three quadrangles: the central quadrangle named after Sir Isaiah Berlin, called the Berlin Quad, as well as the Tree Quad, and the River Quad.

The college has student accommodations inside the college itself, in 'B' and 'C' Blocks, and also has similar accommodations in the Robyn Gandy Buildings, the new 'M' Block, and in existing old houses on Linton Road, which serve as the annexes of the college.

Common room and hall

The college has one common room for fellows and graduate students. It has two floors: the upper common room, with an attached terrace overlooking the punting harbour, has the bar and the coffee counter, while the lower common room has the magazines and newspapers. The college's hall is one of the few in the university to have common table.

The gardens

The college owns grounds on both sides of the river, including two meadows on the opposite side, towards Marston. It has s small but well maintained garden behind its main building, and beside the river. It is landscaped well on the river-bank, with a flight of steps leading up to a green-house, a sundial and a croquet lawn. The college also a smaller garden beside the main building and the Robyn Gandy building, both bordering the river as well.

ports and punting harbour

The college own a squash court and has facilties for playing Table Tennis. Members of the college also go to the Summertown Community Centre to play badminton. The college participates in all other sporting events organised by the university, including cricket and soccer. The college also participates in the inter-university rowing events every year.Wolfson is one of the only three colleges of the university to have a private punting harbour. The college's punting harbour is one of the largest in the city, with a well maintained fleet of punts for use by all members of the college community. There is a boat club on the ground floor of the 'C' Block, for this purpose, which is under the supervision of the Admiral of Punts, who is selected annually from the existing student body of the college.

Notable alumni

* Joe Andrew, Professor of Russian Literature at Keele University
* Richard Ellis, CBE, FRS, extragalactic astronomer, Steele Professor at Caltech and former Director, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
* Artur Ekert, one of the pioneers of quantum cryptography, and winner of the Maxwell and Hughes medals, and the Descartes Prize
* Henry Hardy, author and editor, publisher of Isaiah Berlin's papers
*Muhammad Sohail Anwar Choudhry, Senior Official (Deputy Secretary) for Government of Punjab, Pakistan
* Nigel Hitchin, British mathematician, winner of the Sylvester Medal
* Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, Prosecutor in the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, counsel before Special Courts in East Timor and Sierra Leone
* Josef W. Meri, leading specialist in Islam in the pre-modern period, Islamic cultural and social history
* Michele Mosca, quantum scientist known for his work on quantum algorithm and NMR quantum computation
* Iain Pears, popular British novelist, art historian
* Hon. Justice Francisco Rezek, distinguished Brazilian jurist and member of the International Court of Justice and formerly Foreign Minister of Brazil
* Simon Upton, formerly Minister of Health, Environment and Science and Technology and member of the National Party
* Mike Woodin, former principal speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales (later Fellow of Balliol)

Notable fellows

* Samson Abramsky, FRS, computer scientist and developer of domain theory in logic form, game semantics and categorical quantum mechanics
* Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM, CBE, regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential liberal philosophers
* John Barnes, developer of the Ada programming language
* William Bradshaw, Baron Bradshaw, Member of the House of Lords
* Sebastian Brock, leading expert in Syriac language
* Norman Davies, noted English historian of Welsh descent
* Sir Anthony Epstein, CBE, FRS, discovered the Epstein-Barr virus
* Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, KBE, endocrinologist and medical scientist and prominent opponent of apartheid in South Africa
* Sir Tony Hoare, FRS, computer scientist, developer of Quicksort the widely used sorting algorithm
* Roger Moorey, British archeologist and keeper of antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
* Sir Gareth Roberts, FRS, physicist and influential figure in shaping British policy on the sciences
* Sumit Sarkar, Indian historian, former professor of history, Delhi University
* Erich Wolf Segal, American author and screenwriter, wrote the screenplay for The Beatles' 1968 motion picture "Yellow Submarine"
* Steven Schwartz, Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia
* Jon Stallworthy, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Oxford, UK
* Bryan Sykes, world renowned human geneticist
* Niko Tinbergen, Dutch ethologist and Nobel prize winner
* Geza Vermes, Christian and Jewish historian and leading authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls

Gallery

Notes and references

See also

*
*
*Wolfson College, Cambridge

External links

* [http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/wolfson/ Virtual Tour of the College]
* [http://wolfson.wikia.com Wolfson College wiki]