University of Oxford - Notable Alumni and Academics

Notable Alumni and Academics

There are many notable Oxonians (as alumni of the University are known):

Twenty-six 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 thirty other international leaders have been educated at Oxford. This number includes Harald V of Norway, Abdullah II of Jordan, three Prime Ministers of Australia (John Gorton, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke), two Prime Ministers of Canada (Lester B. Pearson, and John Turner), two Prime Ministers of India (Manmohan Singh and Indira Gandhi (although she did not finish her degree)), five Prime Ministers of Pakistan (Liaquat Ali Khan, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Sir Feroz Khan Noon, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and Benazir Bhutto), S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike (former Prime Minister of Ceylon), Norman Washington Manley of Jamaica, Eric Williams (Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago), Álvaro Uribe (Colombia's former President), Abhisit Vejjajiva (former Prime Minister of Thailand) and Bill Clinton (the first President of the United States to have attended Oxford; he attended as a Rhodes Scholar). Arthur Mutambara (Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe), was a Rhodes Scholar in 1991. Festus Mogae (former president of Botswana) was a student at University College. The Burmese democracy activist and Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, was a student of St. Hugh's College. Including Aung San Suu Kyi, forty-seven Nobel prize-winners have studied or taught at Oxford.

Oxford has also produced at least twelve saints, and twenty Archbishops of Canterbury, including the current incumbent, Rowan Williams, (who studied at Wadham College and was later a Canon Professor at Christ Church). Religious reformer John Wycliffe was an Oxford scholar, for a time Master of Balliol College. John Colet, Christian humanist, Dean of St Paul's, and friend of Erasmus, studied at Magdalen College. The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, studied at Christ Church and was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. Other religious figures were Mirza Nasir Ahmad, the third Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and Shoghi Effendi, one of the appointed leaders of the Baha'i faith.

Some fifty Olympic medal-winners have academic connections with the university, including Sir Matthew Pinsent, quadruple gold-medallist rower. T. E. Lawrence was a student at Jesus College, while other illustrious students include the explorer, courtier, and man of letters, Sir Walter Raleigh, (who attended Oriel College but left without taking a degree) to the Australian media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

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, Philip 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, and seven poets laureate (Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, Robert Bridges, Cecil Day-Lewis, Sir John Betjeman, and Andrew Motion).

Economists Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, E. F. Schumacher and Amartya Sen, and philosophers Robert Grosseteste, William of Ockham, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, and A. J. Ayer all spent time at Oxford.

Some notable scientists include Robert Hooke, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Frederick Soddy, Tim Berners-Lee, co-inventor of the World Wide Web, and Dorothy Hodgkin. Robert Boyle, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, and Erwin Schrödinger also spent time at the university.

Composers Sir Hubert Parry, George Butterworth, John Taverner, William Walton, James Whitbourn and Andrew Lloyd-Webber have all been involved with the university.

Actors Hugh Grant, Kate Beckinsale, Dudley Moore, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones were undergraduates at the University, as were Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and film-makers Ken Loach and Richard Curtis. Sportspeople who have attended the university include Imran Khan.

More complete information on famous senior and junior members of the University can be found in the individual college articles (an individual may be associated with two or more colleges, as an undergraduate, postgraduate, and/or member of staff).