剑桥大学建校800周年
剑桥大学建校800周年
Cambridge through the Centuries
1200s | 1300s | 1400s | 1500s | 1600s | 1700s | 1800s | 1900s | 2000s
| 1209 | Groups of scholars congregate at the ancient Roman trading post of Cambridge for the purpose of study, the earliest record of the University. | |
| 1284 | Peterhouse, the first college at Cambridge, is founded by the Bishop of Ely. | |
| 1326 | Clare College is founded. | |
| 1347 | Mary, Countess of Pembroke, founds Pembroke College. | |
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1381 |
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The Peasant’s Revolt. A mob led by the city’s mayor stormed Corpus Christi College, burning records and books, in protest against its rigid exaction of "candle rents", or rent charges assessed upon houses in its ownership, according to the number of wax-tapers found. A wage freeze and a new poll tax ignites the Peasant’s Revolt. Led by Wat Tyler, the peasants march on London to protest, but King Richard’s forces behead Tyler and the uprising is swiftly crushed. |
| 1446 | Henry VI, founder of Eton and of King’s College, Cambridge, lays the first stone of King’s College Chapel. The founding charter of King’s was written by John Broke (documented 1443-1450) clerk of the chancery, and illuminated by the London artist William Abell (documented 1450-d.1474). | |
| 1503 | Thomas Cranmer, aged 14, enters the newly-endowed Jesus College. | |
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1505 |
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Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, founds Christ’s College. |
| 1511 | Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, founds St John’s College. | |
| 1516 | Desiderius Erasmus works on his translation of the Greek New Testament and on textbooks which were to become the staple of the ‘new learning’. His work led to him being considered the most important scholar of the Northern Renaissance. | |
| 1533 | Thomas Cranmer ends his career in Cambridge to become the first post-reformation Archbishop of Canterbury. While in the post, he annuls Henry VIII’s marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn and divorces him from Anne of Cleves. He is also largely responsible for the Book of Common Prayer, the official directory of worship of the Church of England. | |
| 1546 | Henry VIII founds Trinity College. | |
| 1584 | The Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest-established press, begins its unbroken record of publishing every year until the present. | |
| 1600 | Dr William Gilbert of St John’s publishes his ‘De Magnete’, a scientific work fundamental to the development of navigation and map making. | |
| 1625 | John Milton enters Christ’s, where he studies until 1632. Five years later, on the death of his friend, Edward King, he writes Lycidas , recalling in pastoral terms their days together. | |
| 1627 | John Harvard enters Emmanuel College as an undergraduate. He later emigrates to America bequeaths his library and half his estate to the college founded in 1636 at Newtowne, Massachusetts. In 1638 the college was named for him and Newtowne was renamed Cambridge. | |
| 1628 | William Harvey of Gonville and Caius College, publishes his celebrated treatise, ‘De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus’, (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals), describing his discovery of the mechanism of blood circulation. | |
| 1675 | Charles II appoints John Flamsteed to the new post of Astronomer Royal. The following year, Flamsteed, educated at Cambridge, institutes reliable observations at Greenwich, near London, providing data from which Newton is later able to verify his gravitational theory. | |
| 1687 | Isaac Newton publishes ‘Principia Mathematica’, establishing the fundamental principles of modern physics. | |
| 1704 | The Plumian chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy is endowed by Thomas Plume of Christ’s. Subsequent incumbents include Roger Cotes, Sir George Biddel Airy, who was responsible for the first public observatory in Cambridge, James Challis, Sir George Darwin, son of the naturalist Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle and Sir Martin Rees. | |
| 1711 | Richard Bentley, Regius Professor of Divinity from 1717, completes his edition of the Latin poet, Horace. His editing and interpretation of classical texts inspires all later generations of classics scholars. | |
| 1762 | The University’s first Botanic Garden is endowed by Richard Walker of Trinity. | |
| 1776 | Cambridge graduates, Thomas Nelson, Trinity and later of Virginia; Arthur Middleton, St John’s and later of South Carolina and Thomas Lynch, Gonville and Caius and also of South Carolina, are among the signatories of America’s Declaration of Independence. | |
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1784 |
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The Rt Hon William Pitt of Pembroke is elected MP for the University at the age of 25, a year after becoming Prime Minister. |
| 1787 | Wordsworth enters St John’s, and publishes his first poem. He later became Poet Laureate. | |
| 1805 | Lord Byron enters Trinity and starts writing his early satires and poems. | |
| 1806 | Viscount Palmerston is elected to Parliament three years after entering St John’s, beginning a distinguished lifetime’s career in Government, much of it as an MP for the University. He served two terms as Prime Minister, the first of which saw his vigorous prosecution of the Crimean war with Russia in 1855. | |
| 1812 | Charles Babbage, while an under-graduate at Peterhouse, has his first ideas for a calculating machine and later starts work on his ‘difference engine’, which he never completed but which heralds later inventions leading to the modern computer. | |
| 1829 |
Alfred Tennyson, Trinity under-graduate, is awarded the Chancellor’s medal for his poem, ‘Timbuctoo’. In 1850, he publishes his major poetic achievement, ‘In Memoriam’, the elegy mourning the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, also of Trinity, and succeeds Wordsworth as Poet Laureate.
1829 also sees the staging of the first Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford, won by Oxford. |
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| 1831 | Charles Darwin of Christ’s is recommended by Botany Professor John Stevens Henslow to join HMS Beagle as the naturalist on its scientific survey of South American waters. | |
| 1847 | Prince Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria, is elected Chancellor and becomes an influential voice for reform. | |
| 1849 | Thomas Babington Macaulay, Fellow of Trinity, publishes volumes one and two of his immensely popular ‘History of England’. | |
| 1851 | The Natural Sciences Tripos is first examined, loosening the stranglehold of mathematics and classics on the syllabus, and opening the door to modern studies of the arts and sciences. | |
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1859 |
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Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ is published. This was followed by The Descent of Man (1871) which argued that humans and apes shared a common ancestor – a theory which revolutionised our understanding of life. |
| 1869 | Emily Davies and others found Girton College, the first residential university-level institution of higher learning for women. | |
| 1870 | William Cavendish, seventh Duke of Devonshire, endows the University’s new Cavendish Laboratory for the study of experimental physics. Total cost: £8,450. | |
| 1871 | James Clerk Maxwell returns to Cambridge as the first Cavendish Professor of Physics. Two years afterwards he publishes his ‘Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism’ and later outlines his theory of electromagnetic radiation, confirming him as the leading theoretical physicist of the century. | |
| 1888 | Frederic William Maitland is appointed Downing Professor of the Laws of England. He remains the outstanding figure in the understanding of the Mediaeval History and Law of England. His work secures Cambridge as one of the world’s leading centres for the study of legal history. | |
| 1897 | J.J. Thomson, Cavendish Professor of Physics, discovers the electron, laying the foundations for the whole of modern physics, including electronics and computer technology. In following years, inventors use his work to develop new devices such as the telephone, radio and television. | |
| 1899 | Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf and Thoby Stephen meet as under-graduates at Trinity and form the nucleus of what was to become known as the Bloomsbury Group. | |
| 1903 | Bertrand Russell, Fellow of Trinity, publishes ‘Principles of Mathematics’, the same year as G.E. Moore publishes his influential ‘Principia Ethica’. In 1913, Russell and A.N. Whitehead publish the even more influential `Principia Mathematica’. It is another four decades before Russell collects his Nobel prize for Literature. | |
| 1906 | J.J. Thomson collects his Nobel prize for Physics for his work on the electron. | |
| 1907 | Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India 1947-1964, enters Trinity. | |
| 1911 | Ludwig Wittgenstein arrives in Cambridge from Vienna to study philosophy with Russell. The work of the two men, with Moore, transforms philosophy during the first half of the 20th century and makes Cambridge the most important centre for philosophical research in the English-speaking world. | |
| 1912 | During a walk on the Backs, the young Lawrence Bragg has an idea that will lead to his discovery of the mechanism of X-ray diffraction. Three years later, he shares his Nobel prize for Physics with his father, W.H. Bragg. | |
| 1918 | Following the Armistice, Eric Milner-White, Dean of King’s, institutes the first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, now broadcast worldwide from King’s College Chapel each Christmas Eve. | |
| 1927 | George ‘Dadie’ Rylands becomes a Fellow of King’s. His career inspired generations of actors and directors including Derek Jacobi, Michael Redgrave, Daniel Massey, Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn and Jonathan Miller. | |
| 1929 | Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Professor of Biochemistry, receives his Nobel prize for Physiology and Medicine for discovering vitamins. It was his work which gave rise to the study of a new subject, biochemistry, and inspired Sir William Dunn’s trustees to endow the now world famous Sir William Dunn Institute of Biochemistry. | |
| 1932 | The atom is split for the first time. The work, giving birth to the study of nuclear physics, is carried out by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, under the direction of Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory. Their Nobel prize for Physics is awarded in 1951. |
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