The most prestigious university in the world

World-class facilities Over the last ten years, the University has invested over £400 million in its science facilities and infrastructure. Here are just some of our newest world-class facilities: The Beecroft Building is a state-of-the-art laboratory and teaching facility for experimental and theoretical physics, with space for some 200 physicists. The high-specification laboratories are capable of housing extremely environmentally sensitive atomic-level experiments, and are among the very best globally. They can maintain temperature to within a tenth of a degree, and reduce vibration down to the width of a few atoms. The Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery is a new £115 million interdisciplinary research centre. It is the world’s largest health data institute, and houses both the Targeted Discovery Institute (TDI) and the Big Data Institute (BDI). The centre provides space for six hundred scientists across research areas who are working to define disease more accurately, identify targets for new drugs and to help us to understand how disease responds to treatment. The Earth Sciences Building is equipped with a range of specialised laboratories and houses the largest suite of mass spectrometers of any earth science department in the world. In the metal-free labs trace metals can be analysed without contamination, and the basement labs have been modified to remove any trace of the earth’s magnetic field.

Libraries Oxford is famous for its libraries, and with good reason. The University has incredible collections of books, manuscripts and other materials, many of them housed in beautiful, historic buildings. These resources draw scholars to the University from all over the world. The Bodleian Libraries Founded in 1602, the Bodleian is the principal University library, and one of the oldest libraries in Europe. For 400 years, it has received a copy of every item, digital or online, published in the UK. The Bodleian Libraries is also the largest library system in the UK. It includes the main Bodleian Library and libraries all across Oxford, including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 13 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals, and outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera.