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The Radcliffe Camera was designed by James Gibbs as a library and
was constructed between 1737 and 1747. It became part of the Bodleian
in the nineteenth century.
The Bodleian is a copyright library, estimated to contain 3 million
books. It began as Duke Humphrey's Library (which is open to visitors), then
expanded into the old Examination Schools. Under Radcliffe
Square are thousands of book stacks in vaults. In the 1930s a tunnel was
built to link the building with the new Bodleian on the other side
of Broad Street. The scientific section is called the Radcliffe Science
Library and is situated next to the University Museum.
The medieval apothecaries' quarter was in the present Radcliffe Square,
and the Physic School in Catte Street survived until 1485.
John Radcliffe (1650-1715) studied medicine at the University and became a
very successful London practitioner and doctor to royalty. He was also a
governor of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. His chief gift to Oxford
was the bequeathing of his estate to the
University for new buildings and for fellowships, and this is why his
name appears so regularly throughout the city. The Camera, Observatory, and
Infirmary are all results of his bequest. University College was another
beneficiary and had two medical fellowships from the good doctor.
He is buried in St Mary's in the High.
It was at Wadham College,
in the lodgings of the Warden,
Dr John Wilkins, that those devotees of the "new" or "experimental"
philosophy were to meet during the period following the English Civil War.
Christopher
Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and other leading
mathematicians and experimenters
met together under the auspices of the Philosophical Society at
Oxford, formed after Wilkins was appointed Warden of Wadham in 1648 and
several other scientists moved to Oxford because of the unrest in London
during the Commonwealth. It was this group of eminent scientists that
came to form the Royal Society, England's leading scientific institution.
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