Wolfson College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is all-graduate, and one of the most modern in the university, in architectural terms. Quietly located in the north of Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson has over sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and junior research fellows. The college caters to a wide range of subjects, from the humanities to natural and social sciences. As of 2006, it had a financial endowment of £33.5 million.^[1]

The college motto is Humani nil alienum. This is an extract from the Roman playwright Terence: Homo sum, humani nil alienum a me puto, meaning: I am a human being, and I consider nothing that concerns human beings alien from me.

The college is very diverse, with a deeply internationally oriented student body. Perhaps reflecting this, Wolfson is the home of Oxford's Centre for Korean Studies and the International Association of Tibetan Studies.

Owning land on both sides of the River Cherwell, Wolfson is 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.

Darwin College of the University of Cambridge is Wolfson's sister college.

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.

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. Berlin envisioned Wolfson to be a centre of academic excellence but, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, also bound to a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos.^[2] In Berlin's words, the college would be 'new, untrammelled and unpyramided'.^[2] Berlin's ideals were 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 presence in the early years 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.^[2]

The college began its existence with the name Iffley College, offering 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 College possible. As of 1965, Iffley College had no president or building, but the early governing fellows had a clear vision for the college, to cater to graduate students, and promote studies incorporating an inter-disciplinary approach. In 1966, the college received support from the Wolfson Foundation and Ford Foundation to establish its own college site. The former Foundation's contribution was recognized with college's name change to Wolfson College. Isaiah Berlin became Wolfson's first President in 1967. By 1974, the college completed its own buildings on the current site in north Oxford and achieved full collegiate status in 1981.

Notable Fellows

Wolfson's punting harbour and island

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

Notable Alumni

• Hon. Justice Francisco Rezek, distinguished Brazilian jurist and member of the International Court of Justice
• 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
• 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
• Iain Pears, popular British novelist, art historian
• 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
• 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
• Mike Woodin, former principal speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales (later fellow at Balliol)
• Simon Upton, former New Zealand politician and member of parliament from 1981 to 2001, representing the National Party

Gallery

<gallery widths="200px"> Image:Wolfson College Oxford forecourt.jpg|Forecourt and entrance Image:Wolfson Tree Quad.jpg|Tree quad </gallery>

Notes and references

See also

• Former students of Wolfson College, Oxford
• Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford
• Wolfson College, Cambridge

External links

• Virtual Tour of the College
• Wolfson College wiki

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