Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Founded in 1624, the College was named after the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, who was at the time Chancellor of the University and the patron of William Shakespeare. The official founder was King James I, and it is in his name that Pembroke students are permitted to wear silver tassels in their caps (mortarboards). Part of the College is situated in buildings formerly used by the mediæval Hall Broadgates.

The main buildings of the College date mainly from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and are built of Cotswold limestone. The Geoffrey Arthur Building (GAB), a modern annex built nearby on the banks of the River Thames at Grandpont, provides accommodation for almost a hundred undergraduates, usually those in their final year.

Samuel Johnson was one of the College's more famous alumni, though he did not complete his degree (he was later awarded an honorary degree by the University); lack of funds forced him to leave Oxford after about a year and a half. Two of his desks and various other possessions (his teapot, mug, and the like) are on display in the library and elsewhere in the College.

James Smithson, whose bequest founded the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., despite his never having visited the United States, was an undergraduate at Pembroke, under the name "James Lewis Macie" — he changed his name to that of his natural father after the death of his mother.

Senator J. William Fulbright, who established the Fulbright Fellowships, was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke in the 1920s.

Pembroke has the dubious honour of being home to the only leather condoms still intact today - kept in the archive room of the college library.

Although he had been an undergraduate at Exeter College, J.R.R. Tolkien was a Fellow of Pembroke from 1925 to 1945, and wrote The Hobbit and the first two books of The Lord of the Rings during his time there.

Among the College's more recent Masters was Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in under four minutes.

Pembroke was described by John Betjeman, in Summoned by Bells:

How empty, creeper-grown and odd

Seems lonely Pembroke's second quad

Still, when I see it, do I wonder why

That college so polite and shy

Should have more character than Queen's

Or Univ, splendid in the High.

Notable former students

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• King Abdullah II of Jordan
• Francis Beaumont
• William Blackstone
• Edmund Bonner
• Thomas Browne
• William Camden
• Mary Creagh
• Julian Critchley
• Denzil Davies
• Maria Eagle
• J. William Fulbright
• Charles Hawtrey (19th century actor)
• George Procter Hawtrey
• Michael Heseltine
• Walter Isaacson
• Samuel Johnson
• Philip Lader
• Richard G. Lugar
• Viktor Orbán
• John Pym
• Radek Sikorski
• James Smithson
• John Snagge
• Honeysuckle Weeks (actress)
• George Whitefield

See also Former students of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Academics/teachers

(The names of current members are followed by links to their College pages)

• R. G. Collingwood
• John Eekelaar (F.B.A.) *
• Malcolm R. Godden *
• Alexander Kacelnik *
• Peter J. King *
• Martha Klein *
• Sir John Krebs (F.R.S.)
• Theo Maarten van Lint *
• I. James McMullen (F.B.A.) *
• Ken Mayhew ^*
• Naci Mehmet *
• Christopher Melchert *
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Bishop Kallistos (Timothy Ware) of Diokleia

Sources

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Colleges of the University of Oxford | 1624 establishments

Pembroke College (Oxford)