Merton College employed J.R.R. Tolkien as a professor from 1945 until his retirement in 1959.
Tolkien became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature after moving from Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. He held the Merton chair for fourteen years and continued his academic work while The Lord of the Rings was being published.
His Oxford career was rooted in philology, the historical study of languages and texts. Tolkien's scholarship on Old English, Middle English, and related traditions influenced his creative writing, especially his attention to names, sound patterns, heroic poetry, and layered histories.
Merton College is not the only Oxford institution associated with Tolkien. He studied at Exeter College as a student and later taught at both Leeds and Oxford. These different appointments are why references to his Oxford career can sometimes be misleading if they do not distinguish his college affiliation from his university professorship.