サッチャー元首相が亡くなりました。
実は、Oxfordでは、彼女と同じSomerville College（学生は学部を問わずどこかのCollegeに必ず属す）にいました。
ノーベル化学賞受賞者ドロシー・ホジキンが彼女のチューター（同大学では毎週一回教員＝tutorが個人指導をし、tutorialと呼ぶ。私も現在民法の授業で取り入れている）だった。ホジキン以外もインディラ・ガンジーもこのカレッジにいた。
私が在学していたとき（1992ー1993年）は、「女性初の首相を出したことに誇りをもっているでしょう？」とnaiveにも、当時住んでいた院生寮公共スペースで友達（何人かとは今でも誕生カードとかやりとりしいる）にきくと、みな困ったような顔をして、「大学の予算を大幅に減らしたし、保守的で女性が困るようなことをした。きっと大金持ちと結婚したので高額でシッターを雇えるから働く女の大変さもわからないのよ。だから、歴代首相の中で唯一名誉博士号をもらっていない卒業生なのよ。」と評判は悪かった。
Margaret Thatcher Conference Centreを作るときも、名前を入れるのに反対した人がたくさんいた。（確か、はじめはDorothy Hodgkin & Margaret Thatcher Conference Centreとするという案だったのでは？でも結局彼女一人の名を冠することになった）
でも、カレッジでは半旗にして追悼の意を表している。カレッジからきたレターの一部を以下に。（カレッジが保守化したのでなく偉大な卒業生への礼節なのだと思いたい）
また、彼女のカレッジへの直筆レター
http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/CMS/files/Thatcher%20Letter%20open%2019790001.pdf
Baroness Thatcher (Chemistry, 1943) has died today, aged 87
08 Apr 2013
It is with great sorrow that we have learned of the death of Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, this morning at the age of 87.
Baroness Thatcher, then Margaret Hilda Roberts, arrived at Somerville College in 1943 to study Chemistry. Raised in modest circumstances above her father's shop in Grantham, the young Margaret impressed her teachers with her passion for scholarship. Her tutor at Somerville was Dorothy Hodgkin, to date the only British woman to have won a Nobel Prize for science (in her case, Chemistry). Margaret's academic work was strong, and College records show that she was recommended for several grants and prizes, and an Exhibition. She also became President of the Oxford University Conservative Organisation.
Since her graduation in 1947, Somerville continued to enjoy a warm relationship with Baroness Thatcher; she was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the College in 1970. She maintained a particularly close friendship with our former Principal Daphne Park. It is largely thanks to the visionary fundraising activities of Baroness Park that the College was able to build its Margaret Thatcher Conference Centre, which was officially opened by her in 1991. Further successful fundraising campaigns led us to establish The Margaret Thatcher Fund, which now incorporates several exciting initiatives.
Somerville College sets students from all backgrounds on paths to future success. We are immensely proud to have educated Britain's first - and so far only - female Prime Minister and one of the most internationally significant statespeople of the twentieth century. On this sad day, we pay tribute to the truly pioneering spirit that propelled her to the pinnacle of British political, and public, life.
