Abstract
WHILST the study of natural science has been progressing rapidly in other universities and colleges during the last ten or fifteen years, it is a matter of common knowledge that it has progressed very slowly indeed in the University of Oxford. It would be incorrect to say that it has not progressed, for there has been during the last few years a steady, though very gradual, increase in the numbers of men reading for honours in the final school of natural science. In 1885 twenty-two men obtained honours in sciencce, in 1895 there were forty-three names in the class list, and a rather larger number in 1894. The school has just doubled itself in ten years, but for all that the numbers are still small, and out of all proportion to the provision that has long existed for science teaching in the University. It must be understood at the outset that the University, considered as a body separate from the colleges which compose it, has not dealt ungenerously with science. The staff of professors, and the emoluments attached to their chairs, compare favourably with those of any other university in Great Britain; and Oxford actually set the example, at great cost to itself, of building a museum and equipping laboratories for educational purposes. Moreover, the opportunities of scientific study in Oxford are greatly enhanced by the existence within the precincts of the museum of a first-rate scientific library, such as is not possessed by any other college or university in the kingdom. It is a strange thing that when it has so many advantages,. Oxford has allowed itself to be completely outstripped in this particular path of intellectual progress.
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The Position of Science at Oxford. Nature 54, 225–228 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054225c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054225c0