[9] Its architecture is designed to conform to the traditional college layout and its modernist spire is a landmark for those approaching Oxford from the west.

[10][13] For the creation of Nuffield College and for his other donations he was described in 1949 by an editorial in The Times as "the greatest benefactor of the University since the Middle Ages".

[15] Nuffield appointed its first fellows in 1939, a group that notably included the historian Margery Perham, but the outbreak of World War II meant that the college's construction did not begin until 1949.

During his tenure as Wilson's Chancellor of the Exchequer, future Labour prime minister James Callaghan, who had no formal university education, took tutorials in economics at Nuffield overseen by College fellow Ian Little.

[17] Such was the perceived intimacy between College and government that decades later, writer Christopher Hitchens could recall the "fast set that revolved between Nuffield and Whitehall".

The land on which the college stands was formerly the city's principal canal basin and coal wharfs..[11] The architect Austen Harrison, who had worked in Greece and British Mandatory Palestine, was appointed by the University to design the buildings.

His initial design, heavily influenced by Mediterranean architecture, was rejected by Nuffield, who called it "un-English"[13] and refused to allow his name to be associated with it.

[23] However, the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, although unimpressed with most of the college, thought that the tower helped the Oxford skyline and predicted it would "one day be loved".

[24] The writer Simon Jenkins doubted Pevsner's prediction, and claimed that "vegetation" was the "best hope" for the tower – as well as the rest of the college.

Nuffield fields men's and women's cricket and football teams, while rowing is in association with the Linacre College Boat Club.

[27] Many prominent people have studied at Nuffield, including Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England; Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister of India; Geoff Gallop, former Premier of Western Australia; Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and President of the British Academy; and Jonathan Levin, President of Stanford University.

Visiting fellows include Stephanie Flanders, former BBC economics editor; Tim Harford, author and economist; and George Soros, investor and philanthropist.