Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge is a constituent college of Cambridge University, one of the world’s most respected academic institutions. It is located in Cambridge, England, in the United Kingdom.

The College is often referred to simply as Caius (pronounced [kiːz]) (the College’s second founder John Keys fashionably latinized the spelling of his name after studying in Italy). The college’s present Master, the 41st, is Sir Christopher Hum.

Outline

The College has been attended by many students who have gone on to significant accomplishment. As an academic institution it has included nine Nobel Prize winners on the official Cambridge Nobel list [1]. Caius claims to be one of the colleges with consistently high undergraduate academic achievement [2] and has been ranked 2nd in the Tompkins Table for the last two years.

The college has long historical associations with medical teaching especially due to its alumni physicians John Caius (who gave the college the caduceus in its insignia) and William Harvey.

The college first admitted women as fellows and students in 1979. The college now has nearly 100 fellows, over 700 students and about 200 staff.

History

The College was first founded, as Gonville Hall, by Edmund Gonville, Rector of Terrington St Clement in Norfolk in 1348, making it the fourth-oldest surviving college. When Gonville died three years later, he left a struggling institution with almost no money. The executor of his will, William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, stepped in, transferring the college to the land close to the college he had just founded, Trinity Hall, and renamed it The Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, endowing it with its first buildings.

By the sixteenth century, the college had fallen into disrepair, and in 1557 it was refounded by Royal Charter as Gonville and Caius College by the physician John Caius. John Caius was master of the college from 1559 until shortly before his death in 1573. He provided the college with significant funds and greatly extended the buildings.

During his time as Master, Caius accepted no payment but insisted on several unusual rules. He insisted that the college admit no scholar who “is deformed, dumb, blind, lame, maimed, mutilated, a Welshman, or suffering from any grave or contagious illness, or an invalid, that is sick in a serious measure” (see Brooke's History, p. 69-70, where it is suggested that 'Wallicum' is a scribal error for 'Gallicum'). Caius also built a three-sided court, Caius Court, “lest the air from being confined within a narrow space should become foul”. Caius did however found the college as a strong centre for the study of medicine, a tradition that it aims to keep to this day. By 1630, the college had expanded greatly, having around 25 fellows and 150 students, but numbers fell over the next century, only returning to the 1630 level in the early nineteenth century. Since then the college has grown considerably and now has one of the largest undergraduate populations in the university.

It is one of the more wealthy colleges with an estimated financial endowment of £115m and net assets of £140.5m in 2006.

Caius also very selectively admits academically accomplished American and other foreign students for its various summer programmes, the most prominent of which has been organized in the United States by the University of New Hampshire, although these programmes are not to the Tripos standard.

Buildings

The first buildings to be erected on the college’s current site date from 1353 when Bishop Bateman built Gonville Court. The college chapel was added in 1393 with the Old Hall (used until recently as a library) and Master’s Lodge following in the next half century. Most of the stone used to build the college came from Ramsey Abbey near Ramsey, Cambridgeshire.

On the refoundation by Dr Caius, the college was expanded and updated. In 1565 the building of Caius Court began, and he planted an avenue of trees in what is now known as Tree Court. Caius was also responsible for the building of the college’s three gates, symbolising the path of academic life. On matriculation, one arrives at the Gate of Humility (near the Porters’ Lodge). In the centre of the college one passes through the Gate of Virtue regularly. And finally, graduating students pass through the Gate of Honour on their way to the neighbouring Senate House to receive their degrees.

Gonville Court was refaced in a classical design in the 1750s, and the Old Library and hall were designed by Anthony Salvin in 1854. On the wall of the hall hangs a college flag that was flown at the South Pole by Dr. Wilson during the famous 1912 expedition.

St Michael's and St Mary's Courts lie across Trinity Street on land surrounding St. Michael's Church. The full formation of St. Michael's Court only occurred in the 1930s, with the building at the south side of the court of a block overlooking the market place.

Students and Fellows are accommodated in all of the courts on the central site.

Caius also has one of the largest and most architecturally impressive student libraries in Oxbridge [3], housed in the Cockerell Building. Previously the Seeley History Library and the Squire Law Library, Caius acquired the lease on the Cockrell Building in the 1990s. The college library was relocated from Gonville Court in the late 1990s, following an extensive renovation of the Cockrell Building.

Caius owns a substantial amount of land between West Rd and Selwyn Avenue. Set in idyllic landscaped gardens, the modern Harvey Court (named after William Harvey and designed by Sir Leslie Martin.) was built on the West Rd site in 1961.

Adjacent to Harvey Court is the £13 million Stephen Hawking Building, which opened its doors to first year undergraduates in October 2006. Providing en-suite accommodation for 75 students and eight Fellows, as well as providing conference facilities in the vacations, The Stephen Hawking Building boasts some of the highest-standard student accommodation in Cambridge.

The college owns a large number of residential properties across Cambridge, many of which are used to house both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The Old Courts

Tree Court is the largest of the Old Courts. It is so named because John Caius planted an avenue of trees there. Although none of the original trees survived, there are several trees, which is unusual for a Cambridge front court. The interior north-east corner of the Waterhouse Building can be seen on the left and the exterior south-east corner, as seen from King’s Parade, on the right.

Gonville Court, though remodelled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is the oldest part of the college. The interior east side of Gonville Court, opposite Hall, can be seen on the left.

The Gate of Honour (to the left), at the south side of Caius Court, though the most direct way from the Old Courts to the College Library (Cockerell Building, behind the wall on the right), is only used for special occasions such as graduation. The Senate House (on the left) as well as King’s College Chapel (directly behind the Gate of Honour) can also be seen.

Notable alumni

See also Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

• Harold Abrahams – Olympic athlete portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire.
• Max Born – Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
• Alain de Botton – popular philosophy writer.
• Lord Broers – vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, 1996-2003.
• Alastair Campbell – aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
• Jimmy Carr – comedian and television presenter.
• Robert Carr – former British Member of Parliament and Home Secretary.
• Ken Clarke – British Member of Parliament and former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• John Horton Conway – mathematician.
• Henry Fancourt – naval aviator.
• Orlando Figes – historian.
• Paola Doimi de Frankopan – Croatian aristocrat and wife of Lord Nicholas Windsor
• Peter Fraser, Baron Fraser of Carmyllie – politician.
• John Hookham Frere – diplomat and author.
• Sir David Frost – broadcaster.
• Sir Harold Gillies – “the father of plastic surgery”.
• Lord Goldsmith – Attorney General of England and Wales.
• Andrew Gowers – journalist.
• George Green – mathematician.
• Sir Thomas Gresham – founder of the Royal Exchange.
• Sir Percy Wyn-Harris - Mountaineer, Adventurer & former governor of the Gambia
• William Harvey – medical pioneer.
• Christopher Helm – publisher.
• John F. Lehman – American Secretary of the Navy and member of the September 11th Commission.
• Thomas Lynch, Jr. – signatory, United States Declaration of Independence.
• Iain Macleod – former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
• Inagaki Manjiro – Japan’s first Minister Resident in Siam in 1897.
• Stephen Mangan – actor.
• Stephen Marchant – ornithologist.
• Michael Joseph Oakeshott – philosopher.
• Titus Oates – Popish plotter, “17th century’s worst Briton”.
• G. H. Pember – theologian.
• Andrew Roberts – historian.
• Sir Basil Schonland – physicist and academic.
• Simon Sebag Montefiore – historian.
• Thomas Shadwell – playwright, Poet Laureate.
• Sir Richard Stone – Nobel Prize-winning economist.
• Jeremy Taylor – author and clergyman.
• Adair Turner – British businessman.
• Edward Adrian Wilson – explorer who died with Robert Falcon Scott in the Antarctic.

Notable fellows and Masters

See also Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

• Lord Bauer - economist (student and fellow)
• John Forbes Cameron - mathematician (fellow, Master and Vice-Chancellor of the University).
• Sir James Chadwick - Nobel Prize-winning physicist, discoverer of the neutron (student, fellow, and Master).
• Francis Crick - Nobel Prize winner for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA (student and fellow).
• Richard J. Evans - historian (fellow).
• Sir Alan Fersht - chemist and Fellow of the Royal Society (fellow).
• Thomas Fink, physicist and author (fellow).
• Sir Ronald Fisher - statistician, evolutionary biologist, and geneticist (student, fellow, and President).
• Sir Howard Florey - Nobel Prize-winning inventor of penicillin (fellow).
• Milton Friedman - Nobel Prize-winning economist (visiting fellow).
• Francis Glisson - physician, and one of the founders of the Royal Society (fellow).
• Stephen Hawking - theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor (fellow).
• Anthony Hewish - Nobel Prize-winning astronomer (student and fellow).
• Sir John Hicks - Nobel Prize-winning economist (fellow).
• Robin Holloway - composer (fellow).
• William Lubbock - divine
• Charles Henry Monro - Translator of the Digest of Justinian (student and fellow).
• Sir Nevill Mott - Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist (fellow and Master).
• Joseph Needham - sinologist (student, fellow, and Master).
• J. H. Prynne - British poet (student and fellow).
• Sir John Seeley - Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (fellow)
• D.R. Shackleton Bailey - classicist (student and fellow).
• Sir Charles Sherrington - Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist (student and fellow).
• Quentin Skinner - Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (student and fellow)
• Joseph Stiglitz - Nobel Prize-winning economist (fellow).
• John Venn - inventor of the Venn diagram and historian of the College (student, fellow, and President).
• Peter Tranchell - composer (fellow)
• Sir William Wade - English academic lawyer (student and Master).
• Charles Wood - composer (fellow).

See also

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• Caius Boat Club
• Gonville & Caius Association Football Club

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