Politics
Margaret Thatcher
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1979–1990
Born 1925 · Died 2013
Photo: Rob Bogaerts · CC0
«You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.»
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female prime minister and its longest-serving of the twentieth century, remaking the country's economy through privatisation and deregulation. She remains one of the most divisive figures in British politics.
Key achievements
- First woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1979–1990
- Longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century
- First British prime minister with a science degree
Universities
Oxford, England
Read chemistry at Somerville College from 1943, working under future Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin on X-ray crystallography.
Facts
- She was a research chemist before politics and worked on emulsifiers for ice cream, a fact her opponents enjoyed rather too much.
- She was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, an early sign of where her interests actually lay.
- Oxford declined to award her an honorary doctorate in 1985, breaking a long tradition of granting one to prime ministers who had studied there.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.