Portal:University of Oxford/On this day/February 8

Births

• 1577 – Robert Burton (Brasenose and Christ Church), priest and scholar
• 1819 – John Ruskin (Christ Church), art critic
• 1940 – Dame Averil Cameron (Somerville and Keble), historian and Warden of Keble 1994–2010
• 1955 – Nancy Oliver (Trinity), American playwright and screenwriter
• 1967 – Rachel Cusk (New College), novelist and writer

Deaths

• 1784 – Christopher Bassett (Jesus), Welsh Methodist minister
• 1960 – J. L. Austin (Balliol and Magdalen), White's Professor of Moral Philosophy 1952–60
• 1975 – Sir Robert Robinson (Magdalen), Waynflete Professor of Chemistry 1930–54 who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1947
• 1999 – Dame Iris Murdoch (Somerville and St Anne's), novelist and philosopher