X-Nico

14 unusual facts about university of Cambridge


Bergen Davis

Davis's post-graduate work at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge had prepared him to engage with the new physics which followed the work of scientists such as Einstein, Planck, and Bohr, concepts which he helped to introduce into the Columbia curriculum.

Cambridge University R.U.F.C.

The Cambridge University Rugby Union Football Club, sometimes abbrevriated "CURUFC", is the rugby union club of the University of Cambridge.

Charles Edward Moss

He took up the post of Curator of the Herbarium at the University of Cambridge in January 1908.

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).

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 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.

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".

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.

Purity of Diction in English Verse

The book was written for the most part in Plymouth, and Davie put into it much of what he had learned at Cambridge.

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.

Tim Godwin

He also received a BA (Hons) degree in Public Sector Police Studies from the University of Portsmouth and a Diploma in Applied Criminology from the University of Cambridge, where he studied at Fitzwilliam College.


A. W. Lawrence

He was Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University in the 1940s, and in the early 1950s in Accra he founded what later became the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board as well as the National Museum of Ghana.

Alice Goodman

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

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.

Catherine Bragg

Bragg obtained a PhD in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany, SUNY, a Master of Philosophy in Criminology from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Toronto.

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.

Constance McKee

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

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.

Doctoral Training Centre

The Cambridge Centre for Analysis (CCA) is a Centre for Doctoral Training which offers a PhD course in mathematical analysis at the University of Cambridge, directed by Professor James R. Norris and Professor Arieh Iserles.

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.

Eli Franklin Burton

From 1904 to 1906 he studied colloids with J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, writing an important monograph on the subject in 1938.

English Place-Name Society

When Professor Bruce Dickins succeeded as Honorary Director the Society moved to the University of Cambridge and Miss Margaret Midgley (later Dr Margaret Gelling) was appointed Research Assistant.

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.

Geoffrey de Freitas

De Freitas was educated at Haileybury and Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a successful student and athlete, and was president of the Cambridge Union for a term.

Gerry Ottenheimer

He was born London, England, the son of Frederick and Marguerite (Ryan) Ottenheimer, he was educated at the University of Rome, University of Paris, Cambridge University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Fordham University.

Gustav Victor Rudolf Born

His daughter is Georgina Born, Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at the University of Cambridge, and his niece is the actress and singer Olivia Newton-John.

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.

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.

Karla Pollmann

She studied Classics, Divinity, and Education at the Universities of Tübingen, Munich, Cambridge, and Bochum, receiving her PhD in Classics from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1990.

Kenneth Cracknell

His career included pioneering the interfaith relations work of the British Council of Churches, teaching at University of Cambridge and at Brite Divinity School, Texas from where he retired in 2007 as Distinguished Professor of Theology and Global Studies.

Martin Hengel

He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, St Andrews, Cambridge, Durham, Strasbourg and Dublin.

Maurice Edwards

Edwards was born on 17 May 1886, he was educated at Ripon Grammar School and Queens' College, University of Cambridge.

Menachem Ben-Sasson

After doing a post-doctorate at the University of Cambridge, he became a professor of the History of the Jewish Nation.

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.

R. K. Sinha

Alison Richard, The Vice Chancellor, University of Cambridge, Dr Sinha served his country, his University, and scholarship with great distinction and imbued generations of students with love of the English language and its literature.

Roland Moyle

Roland Moyle was educated in Bexleyheath and Llanidloes, and at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he chaired the Labour Club in 1953.

Sinan Savaskan

Sinan Savaskan was the Music Director and Composer for Oedipus Rex, University of Cambridge’s triennial production performed entirely in classical Greek at Performances at Arts Theatre, Cambridge, 11–16 October 2004; featuring a distinguished production team including Director Annie Castledine and Royal National Theatre’s Designer Stephen Brimson-Lewis.

Stephen Cheeke

and then went on to read English at the University of Cambridge, where he formed half of a stand-up double-act, God and Jesus, with Simon Munnery.

Tamzin Merchant

In 2007, while studying at the University of Cambridge, she performed in an audio production of Lady Windermere's Fan as Lady Agatha, while in 2008 she appeared in the ensemble drama Radio Cape Cod in which she plays a summer theatre camper.

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online

University of Cambridge is Director of the project; James Secord of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge and Janet Browne of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London were the principal investigators for the grant.

The Ghost Club

Formally launched in London in 1862 (attracting some lighthearted ridicule in The Times), it counted amongst its early members Charles Dickens and Cambridge academics and clergymen.

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.

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.

Tibor Scitovsky

He was educated at the Pázmány Péter University (from which he held an undergraduate degree in law), University of Cambridge, and the London School of Economics.

Tobias Rustat

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

Tony Leavey

He went to Mill Hill School and then Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge before returning to east Lancashire where he became a director of companies involved in the weaving and matchmaking industries in Colne and Rawtenstall.

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.

Vincent Buckley

He was born in 1925 in Romsey, Victoria and was educated at the University of Melbourne and St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Whitelands College

One of the oldest higher education institutions in England (predating every university except Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham), Whitelands College was founded by the Church of England's National Society in 1841 as a teacher training college for women.

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.

World Wide Molecular Matrix

First proposed in 2002 by Peter Murray-Rust and his colleagues in the chemistry department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, WWMM provides a free, easily searchable database for information about thousands of complicated molecules, data that would otherwise remain inaccessible to scientists.