At which university did J.R.R. Tolkien become a professor in 1924?

J.R.R. Tolkien became a professor at the University of Leeds in 1924.

Tolkien joined the University of Leeds as a professor of English language in 1924. He had previously worked there as a reader, and his Leeds years marked an important stage in his development as a scholar and teacher of historical languages. He collaborated with E. V. Gordon on the influential edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

At Leeds, Tolkien also helped establish a student society devoted to the study and practice of Old Icelandic. His interest in medieval languages, literature, and storytelling was already deeply developed before his later fame as a novelist.

Tolkien left Leeds for Oxford in 1925, taking up the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Because Oxford became the institution most associated with his mature career, it is sometimes incorrectly named as the university where he first became a professor.