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Somerville College, University of Oxford
Woodstock Road, Oxford
Founded by committee of liberal minded reformists in 1879
Somerville College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, it was one of the first women's colleges in Oxford. Today, around 50% of students are male. The first male students were admitted to the college in 1994. The college is located at the southern end of Woodstock Road, with Little Clarendon Street to the south and Walton Street to the west.
Between 2006 and 2016, the financial endowment rose from £44.5 million to £57.7 million.
Somerville has recently enjoyed success on University Challenge disproportionate to the college's size. The college has won the competition once, triumphing in the University Challenge 2001–02 series and beating Imperial College, London by 200 points to 185. Most recently, the college team reached the final of the University Challenge 2013–14 series, losing in the final to Trinity College, Cambridge, with a score of 134 to 240.
Somerville alumnae have achieved an impressive number of “firsts” – the most distinguishable being that of the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher. Also the first, and only, British woman to win a Nobel prize in science Dorothy Hodgkin; the highest ranking female officer of her time in the British intelligence services (the Queen of Spies) Daphne Park; and also the first woman to lead the world’s largest democracy Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India for much of the 1970s.