the University of Cambridge

, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £7.121 billion (including colleges)
, budget = £2.308 billion (excluding colleges)
, chancellor = The Lord Sainsbury of Turville
, vice_chancellor = Anthony Freeling
, students = 24,450 (2020)
, undergrad = 12,850 (2020)
, postgrad = 11,600 (2020)
, city = Cambridge
, country = England
, campus_type =
, sporting_affiliations = The Sporting Blue
, colours = Cambridge Blue
, website =
, logo = University of Cambridge logo.svg
, logo_size = 255px
, academic_affiliations =
, faculty = 6,170 (2020)
, administrative_staff = 3,615 (excluding colleges)

The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most prestigious, currently ranked second-best in the world and the best in Europe by ''QS World University Rankings''. Among the university's most notable alumni are 11 Fields Medalists, seven Turing Award winners, 47 heads of state, 14 British prime ministers, 194 Olympic medal-winning athletes,All Known Cambridge Olympians
. ''Hawks Club''. Retrieved 17 May 2019. and some of world history's most transformational and iconic figures across disciplines, including Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, John Milton, Vladimir Nabokov, Jawaharlal Nehru, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Manmohan Singh, Alan Turing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and others. Cambridge alumni and faculty have won 121 Nobel Prizes, the most of any university in the world, according to the university.

The University of Cambridge's 13th-century founding was largely inspired by an association of scholars then who fled the University of Oxford for Cambridge following the ''suspendium clericorium'' (hanging of the scholars) in a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient English universities, though sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as ''Oxbridge''. The university was founded from a variety of institutions, including 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties, and other institutions organised into six schools. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, managing their own personnel and policies, and all students are required to have a college affiliation within the university. The university does not have a main campus, and its colleges and central facilities are scattered throughout the city. Undergraduate teaching at Cambridge centres on weekly group supervisions in the colleges in small groups of typically one to four students. This intensive method of teaching is widely considered the jewel in the crown of an Oxbridge undergraduate education. Lectures, seminars, laboratory work, and occasionally further supervisions are provided by the central university faculties and departments, and Postgraduate education is also predominantly provided centrally; degrees, however, are conferred by the university, not the colleges.

By both endowment size and material consolidated assets, Cambridge is the wealthiest university in Europe and among the wealthiest in the world. In the 2019 fiscal year, the central university, excluding colleges, had total income of £2.192 billion, £592.4 million of which was from research grants and contracts. The central university and colleges together possessed a combined endowment of over £7.1 billion and overall consolidated net assets, excluding immaterial historical assets, of over £12.5 billion. Cambridge University Press & Assessment combines Cambridge University Press, the world's oldest university press, with one of the world's leading examining bodies; their publications reach in excess of eight million learners globally each year and some fifty million learners, teachers, and researchers monthly. The university operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Cambridge's 116 libraries hold a total of around 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library and one of the world's largest academic libraries. Cambridge Union, the world's oldest debating society founded in 1815, inspired the emergence of university debating societies globally, including at Oxford. The university is closely linked to the high technology business cluster known as Silicon Fen, Europe's largest technology cluster. The university is also the central member of Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre based around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, which is Europe's largest medical and science centre.

History

Founding

Prior to the founding of the University of Cambridge in 1209, Cambridge and the area surrounding it already had developed a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due largely to the intellectual reputation and contribution of monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. The founding of the University of Cambridge, however, was inspired largely by an incident at Oxford during which three Oxford scholars, as an administration of justice in the death of a local woman, were hanged by town authorities without first consulting ecclesiastical authorities, who traditionally would be inclined to pardon scholars in such cases. But during this time, Oxford's town authorities were in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from Oxford townsfolk, University of Oxford scholars consequently began leaving Oxford for other more hospitable cities, including Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. Enough scholars ultimately took residence in Cambridge to form the nucleus for the formation of a new university. In order to lay controversial claim to being England's oldest university, Cambridge often traces its founding to Henry III's 1231 charter, which granted the University of Cambridge the right to discipline its own members (''ius non-trahi extra'') and an exemption from some taxes.

Pope Gregory IX' s bull gave Cambridge graduates the right to teach everywhere in Christendom. After Cambridge was described as a ''studium generale'' in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, and confirmed as such Pope John XXII's 1318 papal bull, it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.

Foundation of the colleges

The colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the university; no college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels, which were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, and they have left some traces, such as the name Garret Hostel Lane.

Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, in 1284. Multiple additional colleges were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries, but colleges continued being established through modern times, though there was a 204-year gap between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and that of Downing in 1800. The most recent college to be established is Robinson, which was built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it technically the newest full college.

In medieval times, many colleges were founded so that their members could pray for the souls of the founders. University of Cambridge colleges often were associated with chapels or abbeys. The colleges' focus began to shift in 1536, however, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 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.

Nearly a century later, the university found itself at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals, and even commoners saw the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church and felt that it was being used by The Crown to usurp the counties' rightful powers. East Anglia emerged as the centre of what ultimately became the Puritan movement. In Cambridge, the Puritan movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex, and Christ's College. These colleges produced many non-conformist graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or preaching, some 20,000 Puritans who ultimately left England for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s, becoming America's first settlers. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth from 1649 to 1660, attended Sidney Sussex.

Mathematics and mathematical physics

The university quickly established itself as a global leader in the study of mathematics. Examination in mathematics was initially compulsory for all undergraduates studying for the Bachelor of Arts degree, the most common degree first offered at Cambridge. From the time of Isaac Newton in the late 17th century until the mid-19th century, the university maintained an especially strong emphasis on applied mathematics, particularly mathematical physics. The university established a mathematics exam known as a Tripos. Students awarded first class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos exam are called wranglers, and the top student among them is known as the Senior Wrangler, a position that has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain."

The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos is highly competitive and has 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 G. H. Hardy, disliked the Tripos system, feeling that students were becoming too interested in accumulating high exam marks and less interested in the subject itself.

Pure mathematics at Cambridge in the 19th century achieved great things, but also missed out on substantial developments in French and German mathematics. Pure mathematical research at Cambridge finally reached the highest international standard in the early 20th century, thanks largely to G. H. Hardy and his collaborators, J. E. Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan. W. V. D. Hodge established Cambridge as a global leader in geometry in the 1930s.

Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its traditional strength as a world leader in the teaching of mathematics. Cambridge alumni have won six Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics, and individuals representing Cambridge have won four additional Fields Medals.

Modern period

The Cambridge University Act 1856 formalised the university's organisational structure and introduced the study of many new subjects, including theology, history and Modern languages. Resources necessary for new courses in the arts, architecture, and archaeology were donated by Viscount Fitzwilliam of Trinity College, who also founded the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1847, Prince Albert was elected the university's chancellor in a close contest with the Earl of Powis. As chancellor, Albert reformed university curricula beyond its initial focus on mathematics and classics, adding modern history and the natural sciences. Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of its land to permit the construction of Downing Site, the university's new grouping of scientific laboratories for the study of anatomy, genetics, and Earth sciences. During this period, the New Museums Site was erected, including the Cavendish Laboratory, which has since moved to West Cambridge, and other departments for chemistry and medicine.

The University of Cambridge began to award PhD degrees in the first third of the 20th century; the first Cambridge PhD in mathematics was awarded in 1924.

The university contributed significantly to the Allies' forces in World War I with 13,878 members of the university serving and 2,470 being killed in the war. Teaching, and the fees it earned, nearly came to a stop during World War I, and severe financial difficulties followed. As a result, the university received its first systematic state support in 1919, and a Royal commission was appointed in 1920 to recommend that the university (but not its colleges) begin receiving an annual grant. Following World War II, the university experienced a rapid expansion in applications and enrollment, partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.

Parliamentary representation

Cambridge was one of only two universities to hold parliamentary seats in the Parliament of England and was later one of only eight represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The constituency was created by a Royal charter of 1603 and returned two members of parliament until 1950 when it was abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1948. The constituency was not a geographical area; rather, its electorate consisted of university graduates. Before 1918, the franchise was restricted to male graduates with a doctorate or MA degree.

Women's education

For the first several centuries of its existence, as was the case broadly in England and the world, the University of Cambridge was only open to male students. The first colleges established for women were Girton College (founded by Emily Davies in 1869) and Newnham College (founded by Anne Clough and Henry Sidgwick in 1872) followed by Hughes Hall (founded in 1885 by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as the Cambridge Teaching College for Women), Murray Edwards College (founded in 1954 by Rosemary Murray as New Hall), and Lucy Cavendish College in 1965. Prior to ultimately being permitted admission to the university, female students had been granted the right to take University of Cambridge exams beginning in the late 19th century. In 1948, the university officially permitted them entry to the university. Women were allowed to study courses, take examinations, and have prior exam results recorded retroactively, dating back to 1881; for a brief period after the turn of the 20th century, this allowed the steamboat ladies to receive ''ad eundem'' degrees from the University of Dublin.

Beginning in 1921, women were awarded diplomas that conferred the title associated with the Bachelor of Arts degree. But since women were not yet admitted to the Bachelor of Arts degree program, women were excluded from the university's governance structure. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to few university colleges that had been established only for them. Darwin College, the first graduate college of the university, matriculated both male and female students from its inception in 1964 and elected a mixed fellowship. Among undergraduate colleges, starting with Churchill, Clare, and King's Colleges, the former male-only colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. Among female-only colleges, Girton began admitting male students in 1979, and Lucy Cavendish began admitting men in 2021. But the other female-only colleges have remained female-only colleges. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining university in the United Kingdom with female-only colleges ( Newnham and Murray Edwards). As of the 2019–2020 academic year, the university's male to female enrollment, including post-graduates, was nearly balanced with its total student population being 53% male and 47% female.

Town and gown

The relationship between the university and the city has sometimes been uneasy. The phrase town and gown is employed to distinguish between Cambridge residents and University of Cambridge students, who historically wore academical dress. There are many stories of ferocious rivalry between Cambridge's residents and university students. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, strong clashes led to attacks and looting of university properties while locals contested the privileges granted by the government to the academic staff. Residents burned university property in Market Square

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