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Notable Alumni and Academics of Oxford University
The University of Oxford has a wealth of notable Oxonians (as its alumni are sometimes known), who are associated with colleges as undergraduates, postgraduates and/or members of staff.
26 British prime ministers have attended Oxford, including William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith, Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and most recently David Cameron. At least 30 other international leaders have also been educated at the university, including Bill Clinton (who, as a Rhodes Scholar, was the first President of the United States to have attended Oxford).
47 Nobel prize-winners have also studied or taught at Oxford, while contemporary scientists include Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Nobel prize-winner Anthony James Leggett, and Tim Berners-Lee (co-inventor of the World Wide Web). Major scientific pioneers including Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger have also spent time at the university. Pioneers of the scientific revolution, such as Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, either studied at or were otherwise associated with Oxford.
Around 50 Olympic medal-winners have academic connections with the university, including quadruple gold-medallist rower Sir Matthew Pinsent. Other sportspeople who have attended Oxford include Pakistani cricketer (now politician) Imran Khan.
Composers Sir Hubert Parry, George Butterworth, John Taverner, William Walton and Andrew Lloyd-Webber have all been involved with the university.
Economists Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, E. F. Schumacher and Amartya Sen, and philosophers, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham, have also spent time at Oxford.
The long list of writers associated with Oxford includes John Fowles, Theodor Geisel, Thomas Middleton, Samuel Johnson, Robert Graves, Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Graham Greene, V.S.Naipaul, Phillip Pullman, Joseph Heller, Vikram Seth, the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Donne, A. E. Housman, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Wendy Perriam and Philip Larkin. Seven poets laureate (Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, Robert Bridges, Cecil Day-Lewis, Sir John Betjeman, and Andrew Motion) also have connections with the university.
Actors Hugh Grant, Kate Beckinsale, Dudley Moore, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones were undergraduates at Oxford, as were Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and film-makers Ken Loach and Richard Curtis.
The university has also produced at least 12 saints and 20 Archbishops of Canterbury, including the current incumbent, Rowan Williams (who studied at Wadham College and later became a Canon Professor at Christ Church). John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, studied at Christ Church and was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. Another religious figure was Mirza Nasir Ahmad, the third Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and Shoghi Effendi, one of the appointed leaders of the Baha'i faith.
Other illustrious Oxford students include British Army officer T. E. Lawrence (Jesus College), explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (who attended Oriel College but left without taking a degree) and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch (Worcester College).
