X-Nico

16 unusual facts about University of Cambridge


Alice Goodman

She was educated at Harvard University and Cambridge where she studied English and American literature.

Christopher Chippindale

He is a Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and works at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where he is Senior Curator (Archaeology).

Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar

He was born in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra (Bombay Presidency as it was called then) and was educated first at University of Cambridge and then at Universities Marburg and Göttingen.

Edward Rutherfurd

Educated locally and at University of Cambridge and Stanford Business School, where he was a Sloan scholar, he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing.

Hans Lissmann

He was Reader, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, 1966–77, then Reader Emeritus, and Director, Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, 1969-77.

Joseph Priestley and Dissent

Between 1660 and 1665, Parliament passed a series of laws that restricted the rights of dissenters: they could not hold political office, teach school, serve in the military or attend Oxford and Cambridge unless they ascribed to the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.

Ludwik Silberstein

At the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1912 at Cambridge, Silberstein spoke on "Some applications of quaternions".

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Dr. Marta Mirazón Lahr (born 1965) is a researcher of human evolutionary biology and director of the Duckworth Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

May week

May Week, the celebratory week at the end of the academic year at Cambridge University

Noël Olivier

She met the poet Rupert Brooke at a supper party in May 1907, prior to a meeting of the Cambridge Fabians which her father had been invited to address.

Pathways Schools

The medium of instruction is English and the curriculum includes the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) of the International Baccalaureate Organisation of Geneva and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education of the University of Cambridge, England.

Sarah Bridle

Prof Bridle received a first class Masters in Natural Sciences from University of Cambridge in 1997.

Smuts Hall

The result was the design of cloisters giving access to a number of "entries", "staircases" or "flats" modeled on the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges.

The Chaplin Society

The Chaplin Society is a monarchist gentlemen's dining society, based at Peterhouse, at the University of Cambridge.

The Common Pursuit

The Common Pursuit is a play by Simon Gray which follows the lives of six characters who first meet as undergraduates at Cambridge University when they are involved in setting up a literary magazine called The Common Pursuit.

Thomas Hobson

When they were not needed to deliver mail, Hobson's horses were rented to students and academic staff of the university.


Amira Bennison

Dr Amira K. Bennison, a.k.a. Kate Bennison, is a historian of the Middle East, currently senior lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in the University of Cambridge and fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Amrita Narlikar

Amrita Narlikar is Reader in International Political Economy at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Andrew Barnard

He had the honorary dignity of M.A. conferred on him by the university of Cambridge in 1842, and was a governor of the Royal Academy of Music, of which institution he was one of the early promoters.

Anurag Singh

Singh later attended the University of Cambridge and captained Cambridge University Cricket Club in 1997 and 1998, playing against opposing captain and friend Mark Wagh in the annual Oxford vs Cambridge varsity match at Lord's.

Beijing Consensus

Stefan Halper, Director of American Studies at the Department of Politics, Cambridge and former foreign policy official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, offered his own interpretation of the term in his 2012 book, The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century.

Brit Andresen

In addition to the Universities of Cambridge and Queensland, Andresen has held teaching positions at the Architectural Association in London, the School of Architecture and Urban Planning UCLA, Bristol University School of Architecture and a guest lecturing position at The Royal University of Malta.

Cambridge Medical School building

The building for the Cambridge Medical School of the University of Cambridge was designed in 1899 by Edward Schroeder Prior.

Çatalhöyük

After this scandal, the site lay idle until 1993, when investigations began under the leadership of Ian Hodder then at the University of Cambridge.

César Milstein

In 1958, funded by the British Council, he joined the Biochemistry Department at the University of Cambridge at Darwin College to work for a PhD under Malcolm Dixon on the mechanism of metal activation of the enzyme phosphoglucomutase.

Chris Sheasby

Sheasby was educated at Radley College, King's College London where he graduated in Mathematics in 1989, and at the University of Cambridge.

Christopher Layne

Diploma in Historical Studies, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge

Constance McKee

From 1990 to 1994, she was CEO of Cambridge Quantum Fund I, a seed venture fund at University of Cambridge.

Daiwa Adrian Prize

University of Cambridge/Harvard University/Karolinska Institutet: Hugh Robinson, Nathan Gouwens, Hugo Zeberg, Rita Kalra

David E. Green

He then moved to England and worked for eight years at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Malcolm Dixon, on redox reactions in biological systems.

David Lary

He then held post-doctoral research assistant and associate positions at the University of Cambridge until receiving a Royal Society research fellowship in 1996 (also at Cambridge).

Digby McLaren

Born in Carrickfergus, Ireland and educated at Sedbergh School, he received a Bachelor of Arts in geology from the University of Cambridge.

Earls Colne

Earls Colne is one of the best recorded villages in the UK and has been the subject of a study undertaken between 1972 and 2002 by Professor Alan Macfarlane and his team from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Electro-kinetic road ramp

The idea was dismissed as Talk of 'kinetic energy plates' is a total waste of energy in the Guardian by David MacKay, the professor of natural philosophy in the department of Physics at the University of Cambridge.

Fragments from Antiquity

It was first published in 1994 by the Oxford-based company Blackwell as a part of their ‘Social Archaeology’ series, edited by the archaeologist Ian Hodder of the University of Cambridge.

Gar Alperovitz

He is a former Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding Fellow of Harvard’s Institute of Politics; a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Girton, Cambridgeshire

It lies about two miles to the northwest of Cambridge, and is the home of Cambridge University's Girton College, a pioneer in women's education, which was moved there from a previous site in Hertfordshire in 1872.

Inge Lehmann

After having finished school, she studied, with some interruptions due to poor health, mathematics at the University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge.

James Parke, 1st Baron Wensleydale

He studied at The King's School, Macclesfield before matriculating to Trinity College, Cambridge on 28 February 1799, where he won the Craven scholarship, Sir William Browne's gold medal, and was fifth wrangler and senior chancellor's medallist in classics.

Janet Browne

After working as an associate editor on the University of Cambridge Library project to collect, edit, and publish the correspondence of Charles Darwin, she wrote a two volume biography of the naturalist: Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995), on his youth and years on the Beagle, and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002), covering the years after the publication of his theory of evolution.

John Frazer

His early research was developed at the Architectural Association in London, Cambridge University, the University of Ulster, and at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he was Swire Chair Professor, head of the School of Design and Director of the Design Technology Research Centre.

Joseph Lipman

He was a member of the MSRI and visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and the University of Nice and a visiting professor at the Columbia University and Harvard University.

Mansur Muhtar

He earned an Masters degree in Economics and Politics of Development from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1983, and a Phd in Economics from the University of Sussex, Brighton in February 1988.

Maureen MacGlashan

She also indexes a number of non-Centre publications, and occasionally translates (e.g. Prosper Weil's The Law of Maritime Delimitation for the University of Cambridge).

Michael D. Towler

Michael D. Towler (also referred to as Mike Towler, complete name Michael David Towler) is a British theoretical physicist associated with the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and currently research associate at University College, London and College Lecturer at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Mike Mulkay

He worked as a reader and researcher at the University of Cambridge until 1966, he was then lecturer in sociology at Simon Fraser University 1966 to 1969, at Aberdeen University from 1969 to 1973, and then as Professor of Sociology at the University of York, from which he retired in 2001.

Napier Shaw

He studied at the University of Berlin and the University of Cambridge.

Owen Chadwick

As Vice-Chancellor he guided Cambridge through turbulent times in the late 1960s; and was Chancellor of the University of East Anglia between 1984 and 1994.

Polytechnic University of San Luis Potosí

Besides the academic programs, the University offers a series of professional certifications, such as: The FCE by University of Cambridge, the MOS certification by Microsoft, and other certifications offered by Cisco Systems, or Sun Microsystems.

Richard Shone

Having obtained a BA in English from the University of Cambridge in 1971, Shone was through the 1970s and 1980s a prolific reviewer in the art press - The Burlington Magazine, Art Review, Artforum - as well as a contributor on literature and biography to The Spectator and The Guardian.

Roy McElroy

He was a lawyer, trained at the University of Auckland, and the University of Cambridge, where he got a PhD in law in 1935, and was partner in the Auckland law firm of McElroy, Duncan and Preddle.

Sanjeev Goyal

Sanjeev Goyal (born in 1963) is an Indian economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Somak Raychaudhury

He then proceeded to obtain a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, as a member of Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1990, supported by an Isaac Newton Studentship.

Terrington St Clement

The magnificent Parish Church, dedicated to St Clement (i.e. Pope Clement I), known as the "Cathedral of the Marshland", was built in the 14th century by Edmund Gonville, Rector of Terrington, who founded Gonville Hall (now Gonville and Caius College) at Cambridge University.

The Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel

It was also claimed that Westbrook was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, however, the college replied stating no such person was in employment there.

The Woman Who Did

Herminia Barton, the Cambridge-educated daughter of a clergyman, frees herself from her parents' influence, moves to London and starts living alone.

Thomas Baily

-- Catholic Encyclopedia had "Glare Hall", probably typo, though Clare Hall didn't exist until 1966 -->, Cambridge, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1546.

Tobias Rustat

Tobias Rustat (1606?–1694) was a servant to Charles II and benefactor of the University of Cambridge.

University of Guyana

Drayton returned to British Guiana in December 1962, and it was on his advice that Jagan wrote to socialist scholars in the United Kingdom and United States, including Joan Robinson at the University of Cambridge, Paul Baran at Stanford University, and Lancelot Hogben at Birmingham to involve them in the recruitment of staff.

William Bellenden

One of the few that survived was placed in the university library at Cambridge, and freely drawn upon by Conyers Middleton, the librarian, in his History of the Life of Cicero.

Yeavering

During the early 20th century, the University of Cambridge's Curator of Aerial Photography, Dr John Kenneth Sinclair St Joseph (then in the midst of photographing the Roman forts of northern England), flew over Yeavering and photographed a series of crop marks produced in local oat fields during a particularly severe drought.

Zeus Technology

Zeus Technology was founded in 1995 by Damian Reeves and Adam Twiss while they were undergraduates at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.