Merton College, Oxford facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Merton College |
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Blazon: Or, three chevronels party per pale, the first and third azure and gules, the second gules and azure
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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 | |||||||||||
Named for | Walter de Merton | |||||||||||
Sister college | Peterhouse, Cambridge | |||||||||||
Warden | Irene Tracey | |||||||||||
Undergraduates | 291 | |||||||||||
Postgraduates | 244 | |||||||||||
Boat club | Boat Club | |||||||||||
Map | ||||||||||||
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
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Walter de Merton, (c. 1205 – 27 October 1277), founder of Merton
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Henry Savile, Warden from 1585 to 1621, had great influence on the development of the college
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A Graduate of Merton College ca. 1754/55 attributed to George Knapton
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The college boathouse on Boathouse Island, on the northern bank of the Isis
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Merton viewed from the north from St Mary's Church
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Merton College Chapel from just north of the Christ Church Meadow
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William of Ockham, major figure of medieval thought, commonly known for Occam's razor
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John Wycliffe, early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century
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Thomas Bodley, diplomat, scholar, founder of the Bodleian Library
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William Harvey, the first to describe in detail the systemic circulation
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José Gutiérrez Guerra, President of Bolivia between 1917 and 1920
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Lord Randolph Churchill, British statesman, father of Winston Churchill
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Max Beerbohm, essayist and caricaturist (self-caricature from 1897)
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F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, Conservative statesman and friend of Winston Churchill
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Francis Herbert Bradley, British idealist philosopher
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Frederick Soddy, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921
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Nikolaas Tinbergen, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973
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Anthony James Leggett, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003
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Wilder Penfield, neurosurgeon, once dubbed "the greatest living Canadian".
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Andrew Wiles, mathematician notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem. Winner of the 2016 Abel Prize
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Dana Scott, computer scientist known for his work on automata theory and winner of the 1976 Turing Award
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Tony Hoare, computer scientist known for Quicksort, Hoare logic and CSP. Winner of the 1980 Turing Award
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Alec Jeffreys, geneticist known for his work on DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling
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Artur Ekert, Cryptographer and one of the inventors of quantum cryptography
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T. S. Eliot, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948
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Andrew Irvine, English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition
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Leonard Cheshire, highly decorated British RAF pilot during the Second World War
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Roger Bannister, former athlete, doctor and academic, who ran the first sub-four-minute mile
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Bob Krueger, former U.S. Senator from Texas
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Arthur Mutambara, Zimbabwean politician and former Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe
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Mark Thompson, CEO of the New York Times Company and former Director-General of the BBC
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Howard Stringer, former CEO of Sony Corporation
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Liz Truss, British politician serving as Foreign Secretary
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Ulrike Tillmann, mathematician specializing in algebraic topology
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Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology
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Princess Akiko of Mikasa, member of the Imperial House of Japan
See also
In Spanish: Merton College para niños