Eminent Somervillians

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin and educated at progressive schools. She came up to Somerville in 1938 and began studying English, but soon changed to Literae Humaniores (Classics, including the study of ancient philosophy).  

Murdoch took First-class honours, and ten days after she finished her final exams, she was conscripted as an assistant principal at the Treasury. She went on to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). After the War, she studied philosophy as a graduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948, she became a fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963.

Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, was published in 1954. Her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. She continued to publish philosophical works alongside her fiction, including The Sovereignty of Good (1970), The Fire and The Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (1976) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). In 1976 Murdoch was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1987 she was made a Dame of the British Empire (DBE).

Did you know? A set of Murdoch’s novels was reissued in 2019 to mark her centenary. In a Guardian article reflecting on the work, writer Charlotte Mendelson said that Murdoch ‘understood our secret lives: falling in love with exactly the wrong person, maddened with inconvenient lust and sadness and fear. Her books are full of passion and disaster…’

Agnes Maitland came to Somerville Hall as its second Principal in 1889. Her background was in domestic science: she had studied cookery at the domestic science training school in Liverpool 1880-1885, and she later acted as an examiner of teachers trained in the Northern Union Schools of Cookery.

Domestic economy for Maitland was not about cosiness, but about improving the conditions of life. Margery Fry (a student at Somerville and later its Principal), said of Maitland that ‘from first to last, education in all its grades appealed to her most strongly as a preparation for the conduct of affairs and for the business of ordinary life’. While at Somerville, Maitland continued with her public service work, pressing, for example, for more school inspectors. She was an experienced public speaker, and she also set about the task of regulating teaching more effectively, not least by ensuring that tutors were recruited on a longer-term basis. Under her principalship, Somerville more than doubled in size, growing from 35 students to 86, and Maitland urged all students to take the full degree course in their chosen subject, even though this was not a requirement at the time.

Did you know? Agnes Maitland’s published works included The Afternoon Tea Book (1887) and What Shall We Have for Breakfast? (1889).

Madeleine Shaw Lefevre had strong connections to the Liberal political milieu that created Somerville (she was the niece of a former Speaker of the House of Commons, her brother was a Liberal Member of Parliament and her father was a former Vice-Chancellor of London University). From her appointment in 1879, she presided over Somerville Hall much as she would have done over a country house, overseeing the acquisition of premises, managing finances with scrupulous devotion and ensuring that students did not draw attention to themselves.

Shaw Lefevre’s policy of ‘steady, but unobtrusive infiltration’ set the perfect tone for Somerville’s early years, when its status was beset by considerable uncertainty and fluctuating student numbers. Elizabeth Wordsworth, the founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, said that the value of ‘such a figure-head to a recently formed women’s college, exposed as it was to the freest criticism from both friends and foes, can hardly be over-estimated.’ It was in large part thanks to Shaw Lefevre’s influence that Somerville settled so successfully into the Oxford environment, enabling her successors to negotiate full membership of the University for women students on the foundations that she had built.

Did you know? Shaw Lefevre was responsible for converting John Ruskin to the cause of women’s education. ‘I was told he was not much in favour of women’s colleges,’ she later recalled, ‘but I persuaded him to come and see Somerville… several of the students having joined us as we went along, he sat down in one of their rooms and discoursed to them in his delightful way while they gathered round him and literally sat at his feet.’

Kathleen Kenyon grew up in London and came to Somerville in 1926 to study Modern History. While she was a student she became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society. She also won a Blue in hockey. It was the then-librarian  (and later Principal) of Somerville Margery Fry who suggested to Kenyon that she take up a career in archaeology.

After graduation, Kenyon’s first field experience was as a photographer for the pioneering excavations at Great Zimbabwe in 1929. She went on to work each summer for five years at the excavation of the Roman-British settlement of Verulamium (St Albans) under Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler. She also worked at Samaria (then under the administration of the British Mandate for Palestine). From 1936 to 1939, she carried out important excavations at the Jewry Wall in the city of Leicester. Kenyon was closely associated, along with the Wheelers, in the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology of University College London, later serving as its Acting Director and Secretary as well as Lecturer in Palestinian archaeology.

Kenyon’s was most famous for leading the excavations at Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, in the 1950s (her first findings from the site were displayed at the Festival of Britain in 1951). She went on to excavate in Jerusalem from 1961 to 1967. From 1962 to 1973, Kenyon was Principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. In the 1973 New Year Honours, following her retirement as Principal of St Hugh’s, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) “for services to archaeology”.

Did you know? During the Second World War, Kathleen Kenyon served as Divisional Commander of the Red Cross in Hammersmith.

Born in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Winifred Holtby was educated at home and then at school in Scarborough. She came to Somerville in 1917 to read Modern History, having spent a year working in a private nursing home in London. Holtby was one of three students to suspend her studies the following academic year so that she could enlist with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). She returned to the college in 1919 and was a contemporary of Vera Brittain, who became her closest friend (Brittain called Holtby her ‘second self’).

After graduation, the two women moved to London to begin their writing careers, renting a flat together in Bloomsbury (82 Doughty Street, where there is now a blue plaque bearing both their names). Holtby’s early novels were fairly successful, although she was better known for her journalism, writing for Time and Tide and the Manchester Guardian. An ardent feminist, socialist and pacifist, she lectured for the League of Nations and was active in the Independent Labour Party.

Holtby continued to share a home with Vera Brittain after Brittain’s marriage to George Catlin, and she become an adoptive aunt to their two children. One of those children was Somervillian Shirley Williams, who described Holtby as being ‘incandescent with the radiance of her short and concentrated life’. Holtby died from kidney disease at the age of 37. Her best-known novel, South Riding, was published posthumously in 1936, and has never been out of print.

Did you know? The royalties from the publication of South Riding were bequeathed to Somerville in Winifred Holtby’s will and are still used to help fund teaching in History.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin grew up in Egypt and the Sudan and came to Somerville in 1928 to study Chemistry. In the fourth year of her degree she carried out a research project investigating the crystal structure of dimethyl thallium halides, which launched her career in crystallography. Hodgkin went on to doctoral study, returning to Oxford when Somerville offered her a research fellowship in Chemistry. She was appointed the college’s first Tutor in Chemistry in 1934.

During the Second World War, Hodgkin worked on solving the structure of penicillin, part of secret work to refine the use of antibiotics. She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to the point where she was able to use it to confirm the structure of vitamin B12. It was this part of her groundbreaking experimental work on protein crystallography that made her the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1964 (prompting the Daily Mail to run the headline ‘Oxford housewife wins Nobel’).

Hodgkin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947. She received the Royal Medal in 1956 and the Order of Merit in 1965. She is the first (and so far, the only) British woman to win a Nobel prize for science. She is also the only woman to date to win the Copley medal, the Royal Society’s oldest and most prestigious award, given for outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science.

Following a successful fundraising campaign, Somerville has now established a five-year science fellowship in Hodgkin’s name, with the aim of supporting early career women scientists.

Did you know? While she was a tutor at Somerville, Hodgkin was the recipient of the first ever maternity pay in Oxford (arranged by then Principal, Helen Darbishire). She went on to use a large part of her Nobel Prize money to fund the establishment of Somerville’s nursery.

Julia Higgins grew up in London and came to Somerville in 1961 to study Physics, staying on to complete her doctorate. From 1976 she has been based at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London where (since 2007) she has been Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator. Higgins’ scientific work has concentrated on the investigation of polymers with neutron scattering, on which she has co-authored a monograph (Higgins & Benoit 1997).

From 1998 to 2003, Higgins was chair of the Athena Project, which aims for the advancement of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) in Higher Education. She is now the Patron of the Athena Swan Awards Scheme. Between 2003 and 2007, she was chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She was president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers 2002-3, and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 2003-4. Higgins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and was its Foreign Secretary 2001-6.

Higgins chaired the the Royal Society’s State of the Nation Report Steering Group and (between 2008 and 2012) the Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME). She currently Chairs the Royal Society project (funded by BIS) on increasing diversity in the scientific workforce. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the City and Guilds of London Institute, of which she is also Vice-President. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995, she was awarded a CBE in 1996 before being named a dame in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Higgins holds honorary degrees from a number of UK Universities and also from the University of Melbourne, Australia. In 1999, she was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States. Higgins was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001. She is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville and of the Institute of Physics.

Did you know? As part of 2021’s Oxford International Women’s Festival, Julia Higgins gave the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, ‘Seeing is Believing’.

Sam Gyimah was born in Beaconsfield in 1976. After his family returned to Ghana he was educated at Achimota Secondary School, before coming back to England for the last two years of his school education. Gyimah came to Somerville in 1995 to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) and during his studies was elected President of the Oxford Union. After graduating, he worked at Goldman Sachs, and in 2005 was voted CBI Entrepreneur of the Future.

In 2010, Gyimah was elected Member of Parliament for Surrey East and in 2012 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. In 2013 he was appointed a Government Whip, and in 2014 he became Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education. He was also appointed to a second ministerial post at the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for Constitutional Affairs. In 2018 he became Minister for Universities, Technology, Science and Innovation.

Gyimah rebelled against the government in 2019 when it moved to block a no-deal Brexit. He had the Conservative whip removed and subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats. He is currently a board member of Oxford University Innovation, a technology transfer and consultancy company which manages the research and development of University spin-offs. He has also re-joined Goldman Sachs as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs International and Goldman Sachs International Bank.

Sam Gyimah on Somerville During his studies, Gyimah began to struggle financially and found that he could not afford to pay his rent. He was approached by Somerville’s Bursar and offered help: ‘So they converted my entire rent for while I was there into a loan which I subsequently paid when I graduated. Since then I’ve been involved with the college helping raise bursary funds for disadvantaged students.’

Educated in Indira Gandhi came to Somerville in 1937 to read Modern History. She was only able to stay for one year – ill health forced her to leave – but her memories of Somerville were powerful and emotionally warm (if not meteorologically so: she found her room appallingly cold).

In 1941, she returned to India. Acting as official host and assistant during her father Jawaharlal Nehru’s prime ministership (1947-1964), Gandhi began to establish herself as a politician in her own right’. In 1966, as leader of the Congress party, she was elected Prime Minister. She won three consecutive terms of office, steering the country through the war with Pakistan and the declaration of Bangladesh’s independence, and then lost power in 1977 following a highly controversial period of emergency rule in 1975. Her party won the election of 1980 and she became Prime Minister for a fourth term. In June 1984, a violent clash with Sikhs at the Golden Temple caused increased anti-Gandhi feeling and in October 1984, two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in the grounds of her home.

In 2012 Somerville, the University of Oxford and the Government of India launched the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development. As part of that initiative, Somerville and the University of Oxford now offer a series of scholarships in Gandhi’s name for Indian students, supporting study in public policy and sustainable development, with a particular focus on India-related projects.

Did you know? In 1976, Somervillian Margaret Thatcher visited Indira Gandhi in Delhi: ‘I lunched with Indira Gandhi in her own modest home, where she insisted on seeing that her guests were all looked after and clearing away the plates while discussing matters of high politics.’