Eminent Somervillians

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.’

Born in London into a Quaker family, and home schooled until she was 17, Margery Fry came to Somerville in 1892 to study Mathematics (although, in accordance with her family’s wishes, she never took any examinations).

Fry was librarian of Somerville from 1899 until 1904, when she left to become Warden of the women’s residence at Birmingham University. She worked for the Friends’ (Quakers’) War Victims Relief Committee in France 1914-18 and in 1918 she joined the Labour Party. She was elected Somerville’s fourth Principal in 1926, and was responsible for remodelling parts of the college, including the installation of the striking green and blue mosaic tiles on the ground floor of House. Fry referred to Somerville’s ‘students’ (where others still insisted on the more old-fashioned term ‘undergraduates’) and she herself was described by one Somervillian as ‘direct, vigorous and sincere’.

After her time at Somerville, Fry went on to lead the cause for prison reform. In 1918, she became secretary of the Penal Reform League, which merged with the Howard Association in 1921 to form the Howard League for Penal Reform. In 1921 she was appointed a magistrate (one of the first women magistrates in Britain) and in 1922 she became education adviser to Holloway Prison. She was known for her opposition for the death penalty and her support for compensation for victims of crime.

Did you know? Margery Fry’s brother was Roger Eliot Fry, artist and founder of the Omega Workshops and one of the Bloomsbury Group. Margery Fry once suggested to a group of Somerville students that when at home they should decorate their parents’ fireplaces in gold paint.

Penelope Fitzgerald was born into a literary family where ‘everyone was publishing, or about to publish something’, and her mother was a Somervillian. In 1935, Fitzgerald came to Somerville too, to study English. She was a brilliant student, graduating with a congratulatory First and gaining the accolade ‘Woman of the Year’ in the Isis (her First was so impressive that her exam scripts were kept by her tutor, though they are now sadly lost).

After Oxford, Fitzgerald worked for the BBC and established and edited a literary magazine. Her path to literary greatness, though, was neither smooth nor straight. In 1942, she married Desmond Fitzgerald, whose time serving in the Western Desert (where he was decorated for bravery) saw him return to civilian life an alcoholic. A difficult, penurious period followed, with frequent spells of precarious living, including homelessness, a houseboat that sank twice and drudge work for Fitzgerald at an Oxbridge crammer.

Fitzgerald was 58 when she published her first book, a biography of Edward Burne-Jones. She said she wrote her first novel, The Golden Child, to amuse her husband during the last years of his life. After his death, Fitzgerald experienced a late and intense flowering of creativity, publishing her first five novels between 1977 and 1982. Offshore, inspired by her life on the embattled houseboat, won the Booker Prize in 1975. 1995 saw the publication of what is often regarded as her masterpiece, The Blue Flower, about the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Novalis. Acclaimed as one of the best historical novels ever written, it won the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999, Fitzgerald was awarded the Golden PEN Award from English PEN for ‘a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature’. She died the following year. In 2013, her posthumous reputation was cemented by the publication of Hermione Lee’s biography.

Did you know? Fellow Booker Prize-winner Julian Barnes says that he has reread the first scene of The Blue Flower(which begins in the middle of washday), many times, ‘always trying to find its secret, but never succeeding’.

Susie Dent came to Somerville in 1983 to study Modern Languages. She went on to take a Master’s degree in German at Princeton. She began working for Oxford University Press, and shortly after that, she appeared for the first time on Channel 4’s Countdown. Since 1992, Dent has made over 2500 appearances in the show’s ‘Dictionary Corner’. She is the Honorary Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP: formerly the Society for Editors and Proofreaders), and the author of How to Talk Like a Local (Arrow Books 2010).

Did you know? In her talk for Somerville’s 2020 series The Upside, Dent selected some of her personal ‘words of the year’, including ‘Mumpsimus’ (someone who insists that they are right, despite clear evidence that they are wrong), ‘Stiffrump’ (an obstinate individual) and ‘Empleomaniac’ (a person whose thirst for public power and office know no bounds).

Helen Darbishire was born in Oxford and came to Somerville in 1900 to study English. She became a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway College, returning to Somerville in 1908 to take up the position of tutor in English. Her work as a literary scholar focussed on Wordsworth and Milton and she was appointed a University Lecturer at Oxford, later becoming the first woman to be chair of the faculty board of English at Oxford. In 1925-6 she held a visiting professorship at Wellesley College.

Darbishire was elected Principal of Somerville in 1931, resigning her University lectureship but continuing to teach and lecture. While some had been concerned that she might be too academic to make a success of the principalship, she in fact brought a much-needed eye for detail, a warmth of personality and a zest for new projects that proved energising. Her tenure saw the expansion of the college, with major building works (one as a result of an endowment from Winifred Holtby) and the recruitment of tutors including Dorothy Hodgkin (who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for Chemistry).

Darbishire was a trustee of Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere, and in 1943 she became Chair of Dove Cottage, working to make it a study centre. In later life, she moved to the Lake District.

Did you know? Helen Darbishire had no difficulty at all in maintaining her academic research alongside her Principalian duties: when an item of college business required urgent attention, a messenger would take the necessary documents to Darbishire’s customary seat in the Bodleian.

Margaret Casely-Hayford grew up in London and came to Somerville in 1980 to study Law. She was called to the Bar in 1983, working for City law firm Dentons for twenty years and becoming a partner. One of the first black British women to become a partner in a City law firm, Casely-Hayford was named Black British Business Person of the year in 2014.

During her term on the Board of NHS England, Casely-Hayford was one of the Directors who promoted and championed ‘NHS Citizen’, the listening structure for the National Health Service. She was Director of Legal Services for the John Lewis Partnership for nine years and spent four years on the Board of the British Retail Consortium. After chairing ActionAid UK, she was awarded a CBE in 2018 for charitable services. Now retired from executive roles, Casely-Hayford supports and advises organisations on governance and she also offers advice to young entrepreneurs and those, in particular women and BAME or LGTBQ+ people, who wish to embark upon board careers.

Casely-Hayford is a member of the Institute of Directors’ Governance Advisory Board and a Fellow of the Centre for Public Impact. She is Chair of the Advisory Board of the award-winning Ultra Education and is also Patron of the John Staples Society, a body created across the Leathersellers’ Federation of Schools to develop social mobility. Casely-Hayford supports Target Oxbridge, which helps talented black students to apply for and study at Oxford and Cambridge. She is the Chancellor of Coventry University and Chair of the Globe Theatre. She also a member of the Metropolitan Police Oversight Panel. Casely-Hayford is an Honorary Fellow of Somerville.

Margaret Casely-Hayford on Somerville ‘It gave me confidence and self-belief, and it also gave me a platform to be stronger in the cause of promoting women and diversity. I’ve always been a champion of equality, pretty much from the age of 11 onwards. Going to Somerville gave me greater strength to be able to champion what I believe.’

Averil Cameron grew up in North Staffordshire and came to Somerville in 1958 to study Literae Humaniores (Classics). She went on to do a PhD at Glasgow University and then taught classical languages and literature as an assistant lecturer at King’s College, London. In 1970, she was appointed Reader in ancient history. She also worked for brief periods in the US. Cameron was Professor Late Antiquity and Byzantine History at King’s College London, where she was also the first Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies. In 1994, she became the first woman Warden of Keble College, Oxford.

Cameron has been Editor of the Journal of Roman Studies, President of the Roman Society and Chair of the Society for Byzantine Studies. She held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship in the Faculty of Theology 2011-13 and from 2009-14 was President of FIEC (Fédération internationale des associations d’études classiques). She is Chair of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, President of Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville. She was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours, 2006.

You can read a review of Dame Averil’s recent essay on the formation of her philosophy and subsequent scholarly journeys here. 

Averil Cameron on Somerville ‘No one from my family or my school had gone to Oxford, but [a] teacher took me to a summer school in Greek led by John Pinsent of Liverpool University, and he told me I must go to Oxford and to Somerville College, so that is what I did. For all I knew about either, they might as well have been on the moon.’