Famous Oxford people
Profiles of notable writers, scientists and figures associated with Oxford — their colleges, the addresses where they lived, and the places they made famous.
C.S. Lewis
1898–1963 · Author, scholar of medieval literature
Author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Undergraduate at University College, Fellow at Magdalen for 29 years, lived at The Kilns from 1930.
Christopher Wren
1632–1723 · Architect, astronomer, natural philosopher
Astronomer turned architect — designed the Sheldonian Theatre and St Paul's Cathedral. Drawn into the Wilkins circle at Wadham as a young man, he was a founder of the Royal Society and served as its President 1680–1682.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1828–1882 · Painter, poet, translator
The founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was never an undergraduate at Oxford, but came up in 1857 to paint Arthurian scenes on the walls of the Oxford Union — and to discover Jane Burden.
Dorothy Hodgkin
1910–1994 · Chemist, X-ray crystallographer
Somerville chemist, Nobel laureate, X-ray crystallographer. Solved the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin — and remains the only British woman scientist ever to have been awarded a Nobel Prize.
Dorothy L. Sayers
1893–1957 · Novelist, translator, dramatist
Born in the Old Choir House on Brewer Street, Oxford. Read modern French at Somerville (first, 1915). Created Lord Peter Wimsey and set Gaudy Night in her old college.
Edward Burne-Jones
1833–1898 · Painter, stained-glass designer
Came up to Exeter in 1853 to read theology, found William Morris and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur instead. Left without a degree to paint, and went on to design the stained glass that lights Christ Church Cathedral.
Evelyn Waugh
1903–1966 · Novelist
Hertford undergraduate from January 1922 — left without a degree, but the Oxford circle around the Hypocrites' Club fed Brideshead Revisited.
Graham Greene
1904–1991 · Novelist, journalist
Read history at Balliol, graduated 1925 with a second. Sixty-seven years of writing and over twenty-five novels followed.
J.R.R. Tolkien
1892–1973 · Philologist, novelist, professor
Author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings — Oxford undergraduate at Exeter, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor at Pembroke, Merton Professor of English at Merton.
James Murray
1837–1915 · Lexicographer; primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
Scottish-born self-taught philologist, primary editor of the OED 1879–1915. Built the Scriptorium in his garden at 78 Banbury Road. Knighted 1908. Buried at Wolvercote.
John Wilkins
1614–1672 · Cleric, natural philosopher, college head
Warden of Wadham 1648–1659 and convenor of the Oxford Philosophical Club whose Wadham meetings became the nucleus of the Royal Society.
Lewis Carroll
1832–1898 · Mathematician, author, photographer
Christ Church mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pen name Lewis Carroll.
Oscar Wilde
1854–1900 · Playwright, poet, novelist
Magdalen undergraduate 1874–1878 — read Greats, won the Newdigate Prize for 'Ravenna', graduated with a double first.
Robert Boyle
1627–1691 · Natural philosopher, chemist
The author of Boyle's Law worked from rented rooms at Cross Hall on Oxford's High Street between 1654 and 1668 — where Robert Hooke built his vacuum pump and where the New Experiments Physico-Mechanical were prepared.
Robert Hooke
1635–1703 · Natural philosopher, polymath, architect
The Christ Church chorister-scholar who built Boyle's air pump on the High Street, published Micrographia in 1665 (the first book to use 'cell' for the units of life), and was the Royal Society's first Curator of Experiments.
Roger Bannister
1929–2018 · Athlete, neurologist
First man under four minutes for the mile — Iffley Road, Oxford, 6 May 1954, 3:59.4. Read medicine at Exeter, later Master of Pembroke. Buried at Wolvercote.
Stephen Hawking
1942–2018 · Theoretical physicist, cosmologist
Born in Oxford, undergraduate at University College — first-class BA in physics. Lucasian Professor at Cambridge from 1979.
W.H. Auden
1907–1973 · Poet
Christ Church undergraduate, then Professor of Poetry 1956–1961, returned to a Christ Church cottage in 1972 — Pulitzer for The Age of Anxiety.
William Morris
1834–1896 · Designer, poet, printer, socialist
Came up to Exeter in 1853 to read Classics, left as an artist. Founded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, joined Rossetti's Union murals project in 1857, met Jane Burden at the Oxford theatre, and married her at St Michael at the North Gate in 1859.
William Morris, Viscount Nuffield
1877–1963 · Motor manufacturer, philanthropist
The Oxford-bred bicycle-mender who built Morris Motors at Cowley into Britain's largest car maker, then gave most of his fortune away — endowing Nuffield College, the Nuffield Foundation, and the Nuffield Department of Medicine.