History the University of Cambridge

History the University of Cambridge  

The official founding of the University of Cambridge back to the improvement, by a letter in 1231 by King Henry III of England which awarded the ius no additional trahi (right to discipline its own members) plus some exemption from taxes, and a bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX that gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach "everywhere in Christendom."

After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, and was confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318, it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to come and visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.

Foundation of the colleges

Colleges of the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.

Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse in 1284, Cambridge's first college. Many colleges were founded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College achieved full university college category in March 2010, making it the newest full college (formerly a "Approved Society" affiliated with the university).

In medieval times, many colleges were founded so that their members would pray for the souls of the founders, and are often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in focus of colleges came in 1536 with the dissolution of the monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching "scholastic philosophy". In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.

In Cambridge moved away from Canon Law also moved away from Catholicism. Already in the 1520s, Lutheranism and what was to be more widely known as the Protestant Reformation were making their presence felt in the intellectual discourse of the university. Among those implicated was Thomas Cranmer, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. As it became convenient to Henry VIII in the 1530s, the King looked to Cranmer and others (within and outside Cambridge) to develop a new way that was different from Catholicism but also different from what Martin Luther had in mind.

Almost a century later, the university was at the center of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even common people saw the way of the Church of England for being too similar to the Catholic Church and was used by the crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the center of what became the Puritan movement and at Cambridge, it was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College. They produced many graduates "nonconformists" who greatly influenced, by social position or pulpit, the approximately 20,000 Puritans who left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649-1660), attended Sidney Sussex.

Mathematics and Mathematical Physics

The math test was once mandatory for all students in the Bachelor of Arts degree, the main first degree at Cambridge in both arts and sciences. From the time of Isaac Newton in the later 17th century until the 19th century, the university maintains a special emphasis on applied mathematics, particularly mathematical physics. The test is known as a final exam. Students awarded first-class honors after completing the final examination in mathematics are called cowboys and the best student among them is the Senior Wrangler is The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos was competitive and helped produce some of the most famous names in British science , including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and Lord Rayleigh. However, some famous students, such as GH Hardy, disliked the system, feeling that people were too interested in accumulating marks in exams and not interested in the subject itself.

Pure mathematics at Cambridge in the 19th century had great achievements but also missed out on substantial developments in French and German mathematics. Pure mathematical research at Cambridge finally reached the highest international level in the 20th century, thanks above all to GH Hardy and his collaborator, JE Littlewood. In geometry, WVD Hodge brought Cambridge into the international mainstream in the 1930s.

Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its strength in mathematics. Cambridge students have won six Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics, while individuals representing Cambridge have won four Fields Medals. The University also holds a Master of Advanced Study course in mathematics.

Modern Age

After the Law, University of Cambridge formalizes the organizational structure of the University, introduced the study of many new topics including theology, history and modern languages. Resources required for new courses in the arts, architecture and archeology were generously donated by Richard Fitzwilliam of Trinity College. Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of their land to build the Downing site, including new science laboratories of anatomy, genetics and Earth sciences. During the same period, the New Museum Place was built, including the Cavendish Laboratory, which has been moved from the West Cambridge site, and other departments of chemistry and medicine.

The teaching was very upset during the First World War in which more than 14,000 members of the University participated and 2,470 died. As a result, the new state funding began to flow to the entity. After World War II, the University saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available seats, which was due in part to the success and popularity gained by many scientists of Cambridge.

The contributions to the advancement of science

Many of the most important scientific discoveries in history were made by Cambridge alumni. These include:

• Articulation of the scientific method, by Francis Bacon

• The discovery of the laws of motion and calculus, by Sir Isaac Newton

• Discovery of hydrogen, by Henry Cavendish

• The fundamental contributions to thermodynamics, by Lord Kelvin

• Formulation of the laws of electromagnetism of James Clerk Maxwell

• The discovery of the electron by JJ Thomson

• The discovery of the atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford

• Discovery of evolution by natural selection, by Charles Darwin

• The fundamental contributions to the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics, by Ronald Fisher

• Formulation of the theory of computing, Alan Turing

• The discovery of the DNA double helix by Francis Crick and James D. Watson

• The fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics by Paul Dirac

• The fundamental contributions to cosmology, Stephen Hawking

• The fundamental contributions to string theory, by Michael Green

Education of women

Initially, only men were enrolled in college. The first colleges for women were Girton College (founded by Emily Davies) in 1869 and Newnham College in 1872 (founded by Anne Clough and Henry Sidgwick), followed by Hughes Hall in 1885 (founded by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as the Cambridge Teaching College for Women), New Hall (later renamed Murray Edwards College) in 1954, and Lucy Cavendish College in 1965. The first women students were examined in 1882 but attempts to make women full members of the university did not succeed until 1948. Women were allowed to study courses, the tests and their results recorded from 1881, for a brief period after the turn of the twentieth century, this allowed steamboats "ladies" to receive ad eundem degrees the University of Dublin.

From 1921 women were awarded diplomas which "conferred the title of Degree of Bachelor of Arts". Because they were not "admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts" were excluded from the governing bodies of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. From Churchill, Clare and King's Colleges, all men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. A women's college, Girton, also began to admit male students from 1979, but the other women's colleges did not follow suit. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on men in 2008, Cambridge is the only remaining United Kingdom University with colleges which refuse to admit males, with three such institutions ( Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish). In the academic year 2004-5, the relationship between college student genres, including post-graduates, was male 52%: 48% women.

Myths, legends and traditions

As an institution with such a long history, the University has developed a number of myths and legends. The vast majority of them are false, but have been propagated nonetheless by generations of students and tour guides.

A discontinued tradition is that of the wooden spoon, the 'prize' awarded to the student with the minimum passing final exams Mathematical Tripos. The last of these spoons was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of Margaret Boat Club of St John's College Lady. It was more than a meter long and had an oar blade for a handle. Now you can see out of the Superior Combination of San Juan. Since 1909, results were published alphabetically within class rather than score order. This makes it more difficult to determine who is the winner of the spoon was (unless there was only one person in the third class), so the practice was abandoned.

Each Christmas Eve, BBC radio and TV Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The radio program has been a national Christmas tradition since it was first broadcast in 1928 (though the festival has existed since 1918). The radio program is carried worldwide by the BBC World Service and is also syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in the U.S.. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954.