January Light Show
From 17-19 January, Senate House and Old Schools were lit up in a spectacular light show featuring some iconic images from the University's past and present, as well as some new drawings of two of our most famous alumni, produced by world-renowned illustrator and Downing College alumnus Quentin Blake.
In 1628, William Harvey of Gonville and
James Watson and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA to the world from the Eagle pub on February 28, 1953. Their work, along with that of
During his time at Cambridge, Charles Darwin often searched the Fens for rare insects. In his autobiography, he recalled, 'but no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one.
I was very successful in collecting and invented two new methods; I employed a labourer to scrape during the winter, moss off old trees and place [it] in a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus I got some very rare species. No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, Esq."'
On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago, in 1859. As a naturalist for five years aboard the HMS Beagle, Christ’s College graduate Charles Darwin developed his theory of natural selection, which was published in his ground-breaking book On the Origin of Species. 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.The only drawing which appears in On the Origin of Species is the 'tree of life', which illustrates the relationships between all living things.
In 1934, Flight Lieutenant Frank Whittle was sent to
Recognising the importance of music as an academic study, the University established the Faculty of Music in 1947 to teach the newly created Music Tripos, and since then the number of music students has increased enormously, musical activity of every kind has greatly intensified at both university and college level, and the tradition of distinguished musicological research instituted in the early years of the twentieth century by E. J. Dent has flourished. The Faculty now occupies the purpose-built University Music School and Concert Hall, designed by Sir Leslie Martin and built in the mid-1970s. Over recent decades many of the most significant figures in British music have emerged from Cambridge: the composers mentioned above, performers such as Joanna MacGregor, Robert Tear, Thomas Trotter, Roger Vignoles and David Waterman, and conductors such as Andrew Davis, Mark Elder, John Eliot Gardiner and Christopher Hogwood. During the same period the Faculty's intellectual bounds have moved outwards from historical musicology to include music analysis, ethnomusicology and music cognition. The Cambridge Music Faculty is, in short, committed to providing the highest quality of musical education, to conducting research at the forefront of contemporary scholarship, and is proud to build on the great foundations laid in earlier times. Image courtesy of Michael Derringer
Music has a long history at Cambridge. Indeed, in 1464 the world's first firmly-authenticated Bachelor of Music degree was awarded at Cambridge to one Henry Abyngdon, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal to Edward IV. Over the intervening centuries celebrated musicians such as William Boyce, William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Villiers Stanford, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss, Alexander Goehr, Robin Holloway and Thomas Adès have studied or taught at Cambridge. In 1843 the Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS) was established, and gradually built a splendid tradition of concert-giving; half a century later came the Cambridge University Music Club (CUMC), founded for the promotion of chamber music. Cambridge has also been well-known in recent years for the performances and broadcasts of its chapel choirs, amongst whom that of King's College (among others under Arthur Henry Mann, Boris Ord, David Willcocks and Stephen Cleobury) has gained the widest popular recognition.
John Milton is one of England's best-known poets, among whose most famous works are Lycidas, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. He became closely involved with the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War, and acted as official propagandist for Cromwell's regime. During this time he largely gave up writing poetry, instead publishing political pamphlets in support of the Commonwealth. After the Restoration he returned to writing poetry, including his masterpiece Paradise Lost. He has been described as "a poet second only to Shakespeare".
Isaac Newton graduated from Trinity College in 1665. In a 2005 poll of the Royal Society, he was named as the person who has had the single greatest effect on science. Newton published his laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation in his 1687 book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and is considered the father of calculus and modern mathematics. He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1669, a position which today is held by Stephen Hawking. In 1672, through his famous experiment, he was the first to realise that white light was composed of the full colour spectrum.
Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. In 1988, he published his book A Brief History of Time. Hawking is known around the world for his research in the fields of theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity. The book was an international phenomenon, remaining on the Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks.