According to the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject, the University of Cambridge is the world's leading institution for Mathematics, History, and Archaeology.

Cambridge also emerged as the runner-up in six other fields, including English, Modern Languages, Biological Sciences, and Geography.

Looking more broadly at the latest rankings, British universities are second only to their American counterparts, coming out on top in 8 of the 42 fields which QS evaluates.

Among other British universities, only the University of Oxford surpasses Cambridge in terms of the number of world-leading courses, achieving the highest score in the fields of History, in which it tied with Cambridge, English, Modern Languages, and Geography.

The rankings present an improved picture for British higher education compared to last year, when the UK’s universities topped the standings in six fields, with only Oxford leading in more than one subject area.

The UK is represented in the top ten for 41 of the 42 subject areas ranked, 24 British universities accumulating a total of 120 top-ten places between them.

However, American universities continue to dominate, with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology each providing the world-leading courses in no fewer than 12 subjects.

An average of four different measures determine the rankings, with QS taking into account reputation among both academics and employers, as well as the number of research citations and the impact of that research.

However, the methodology varies wildly between different subject areas – the two measures pertaining to research can together account for as much as 50 per cent of an institution’s score, and may not even be taken into account in some cases.

Cambridge’s best score came in the field of Mathematics, where perfect scores of 100 in both employer reputation and research impact helped the university to an impressive overall score of 98.9.

There were further perfect scores for Cambridge in academic reputation for Archaeology, and in both employer reputation and research impact for history.