including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2025, 76 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford. Its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to a number of scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world.
== History ==
=== Founding ===
The University of Oxford's foundation date is unknown.
While no official papal bull established Oxford, the university emerged in the 12th century as part of Western Europe's Catholic educational system. Early teaching was conducted by clerics like Theobald of Étampes, and the curriculum focused on theology and canon law, reflecting its ecclesiastical roots. Most scholars were members of the clergy until the Reformation.
In the 1300s, the chronicler Ranulf Higden wrote that the university was founded in the 9th century by Alfred the Great; the story is today considered apocryphal, although it was believed until the 18th century. It is known that teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when the university came into being. Scholar Theobald of Étampes lectured at Oxford in the early 1100s.
The university experienced rapid growth beginning in 1167, when English students were expelled from the University of Paris by order of King Henry II, who, amid tensions with France and the Church, banned his subjects from studying abroad—prompting many scholars to return and establish a thriving academic community in Oxford. The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188, and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, and the masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry …
