Merton College, Oxford facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Merton College
Quick facts for kidsMerton College
	Blazon: Or, three chevronels party per pale, the first and third azure and gules, the second gules and azure
University	Oxford
Coordinates	51°45′04″N 1°15′07″W / 51.751°N 1.252°W
Full name	The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford
Latin name	Domus sive collegium scholarium de Merton in universitate Oxon.
Motto	"Qui Timet Deum Faciet Bona" ("He who fears God shall do good")
Established	1264; 758 years ago
Named for	Walter de Merton
Sister college	Peterhouse, Cambridge
Warden	Irene Tracey
Undergraduates	291
Postgraduates	244
Boat club	Boat Club
Map
	Location in Oxford city centre

"Merton College" redirects here. For other uses, see Merton College (disambiguation).

Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor to Henry III and later to Edward I, first drew up statutes for an independent academic community and established endowments to support it. An important feature of Walter's foundation was that this "college" was to be self-governing and the endowments were directly vested in the Warden and Fellows.

By 1274, when Walter retired from royal service and made his final revisions to the college statutes, the community was consolidated at its present site in the south east corner of the city of Oxford, and a rapid programme of building commenced. The hall and the chapel and the rest of the front quad were complete before the end of the 13th century. Mob Quad, one of Merton's quadrangles, was constructed between 1288 and 1378, and is claimed to be the oldest quadrangle in Oxford, while Merton College Library, located in Mob Quad and dating from 1373, is the oldest continuously functioning library for university academics and students in the world.

Like many of Oxford's colleges, Merton admitted its first mixed-sex cohort in 1979, after over seven centuries as an institution for men only. Merton's current warden, Irene Tracey, was appointed in 2019 and is Merton's second female warden.

Notable alumni and academics past and present include four Nobel laureates and writer J. R. R. Tolkien, who was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959. Merton is one of the wealthiest colleges in Oxford and held funds totalling £298 million as of July 2020. Merton has a strong reputation for academic success, having regularly ranked first in the Norrington Table in recent years.

Images for kids

Walter de Merton, (c. 1205 – 27 October 1277), founder of Merton
St Alban Hall, pictured in 1837, engraving by John Le Keux from a drawing by F. Mackenzie.
Merton as seen from Broad Walk
Merton College Chapel interior
Front quad, view opposite the chapel
Mob Quad in 2003, from Merton College Chapel tower
The Sundial Lawn
St Alban's quad
Merton Street
A Graduate of Merton College ca. 1754/55 attributed to George Knapton
The college boathouse on Boathouse Island, on the northern bank of the Isis
Merton viewed from the north from St Mary's Church
Merton College Chapel from just north of the Christ Church Meadow
Merton viewed from across the Christ Church Meadow to the south
View of the chapel tower
Fellows' quad
The front quad and the main entrance to the College
Mob quad
The south wing of the Upper Library
Old book bindings at the Merton College Library
Bookshelves in the Library
Globe dating from the 16th century
Library
Merton in 1865
Merton College Library
William of Ockham, major figure of medieval thought, commonly known for Occam's razor
John Wycliffe, early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century
John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury and Anglican divine
William Harvey, the first to describe in detail the systemic circulation
José Gutiérrez Guerra, President of Bolivia between 1917 and 1920
Lord Randolph Churchill, British statesman, father of Winston Churchill
Max Beerbohm, essayist and caricaturist (self-caricature from 1897)
F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, Conservative statesman and friend of Winston Churchill
Francis Herbert Bradley, British idealist philosopher
Frederick Soddy, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921
Nikolaas Tinbergen, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973
Anthony James Leggett, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003
Wilder Penfield, neurosurgeon, once dubbed "the greatest living Canadian".
Andrew Wiles, mathematician notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem. Winner of the 2016 Abel Prize
Dana Scott, computer scientist known for his work on automata theory and winner of the 1976 Turing Award
Tony Hoare, computer scientist known for Quicksort, Hoare logic and CSP. Winner of the 1980 Turing Award
Alec Jeffreys, geneticist known for his work on DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling
Artur Ekert, Cryptographer and one of the inventors of quantum cryptography
T. S. Eliot, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948
J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion
Andrew Irvine, English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition
Leonard Cheshire, highly decorated British RAF pilot during the Second World War
Roger Bannister, former athlete, doctor and academic, who ran the first sub-four-minute mile
Naruhito, Emperor of Japan
Bob Krueger, former U.S. Senator from Texas
Arthur Mutambara, Zimbabwean politician and former Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe
Mark Thompson, CEO of the New York Times Company and former Director-General of the BBC
Howard Stringer, former CEO of Sony Corporation
Liz Truss, British politician serving as Foreign Secretary
Ulrike Tillmann, mathematician specializing in algebraic topology
Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology
Alison Blake, British diplomat and former ambassador to Afghanistan
Princess Akiko of Mikasa, member of the Imperial House of Japan