Oxford university

I have never been able to pin point what prompts me to pick up a book. The reasons are varied: the author, the intro, the font of the text, the book cover (yes, please do not judge me), or, as in this case, the foreword. But it’s what Anand Mahindra, non-executive chairperson of the Mahindra Group, wrote about the author in his foreword to Chemical Khichdi that made me read this book.“At first glance, Aparna’s life looks ideal. Raised in Mumbai and London, she studied at Oxford University and Harvard Business School. A…

“Goblin mode” is another example of how the internet is modernizing our own lexicon. Image: DomCritelli (Shutterstock)Another year gone by, another chance to reflect on our society’s lexicon. While Merriam-Webster officially crowned “gaslight” as their word of the year, Oxford University Press, the publishers behind the Oxford English Dictionary, is paying homage to some edgier internet slang: goblin mode.“Goblin mode” is a “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically…

Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve.Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? The expansive force of the universe, dark energy, for example, is much weaker than theory suggests it should be – allowing matter to clump together rather than being…

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Peter Frankopan is a Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He has written two academic volumes – The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2016) and The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2018) – and a children’s book called The Silk Roads: A New History of the World – Illustrated Edition (2019) with Neil Packer. A decade ago, in a profile for The Economist, Maggie Fergusson described you as…

January 14, 2021 marks 123rd death anniversary of English writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson also known as Lewis Carroll. Lewis was born on January 27, 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire, England.Lewis was the eldest son and third child of the Rev. Charles Dodgson and Frances Jane Lutwidge. He grew up in isolated villages in the English countryside with his ten siblings. The writer who gave the world much of muchness through one of his greatest works Alice in Wonderland went to Christ Church, a constituent college of Oxford…