rsity of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to British politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. More than 40 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leade

Brasenose Lane in the city centre, a street onto which three colleges back - Brasenose, Lincoln and Exeter.
Administrative reforms during the 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with written entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent, and the establishment of four women's colleges.[citation needed] 20th-century Privy Council decisions (e.g., the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of theological bequests to colleges to other purposes) loosened the link with traditional belief and practice.[citation needed] Furthermore, although the university's emphasis traditionally had been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded in the course of the 19th century to encompass scientific and medical studies.[citation needed] Knowledge of Ancient Greek was required for admission until 1920, and Latin until 1960.[citation needed]
The mid-20th century saw many distinguished continental scholars, displaced by Nazism and Communism, relocating to Oxford.
The list of distinguished scholars at the University of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to British politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. More than 40 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leaders have been affiliated with the University of Oxford.[20]
Women's education[edit]


Somerville College was founded as one of Oxford's first women's colleges in 1879, it is now fully co-educational.
The University passed a Statute in 1875 allowing its delegates to create examinations for women at roughly undergraduate level.[21] The first four women's colleges were established thanks to the activism of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (AEW). Lady Margaret Hall (1878)[22] was followed by Somerville College in 1879;[23] the first 21 students from Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall attended lectures in rooms above an Oxford baker's shop.[21] The first two colleges for women were followed by St Hugh's (1886),[24] St Hilda's (1893)[25] and St Anne's College (1952).[26] Oxford was long considered a bastion of male privilege,[27] and it was not until 7 October 1920 that women became eligible for admission as full members of the university and were given the right to take degrees.[28] In 1927 the University's dons created a quota[29] that limited the number of female students to a quarter that of men, a ruling which was not abolished until 1957.[21] However, before the 1970s all Oxford colleges were for men or women only, so that the number of women was effectively limited by the capacity of the women's colleges to admit students. It was not until 1959 that the women's colleges were given full collegiate status.
In 1974, Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford and St Catherine's became the first previously all-male colleges to admit women.[30][31]
In 2008, the last single-sex college, St Hilda's, admitted its first men, meaning all colleges are now co-residential. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female;[32] the ratio is now about 48:52 in men's favour.