by Dr Professor Martin Johnson

Pioneer of electro-magnetic waves and widely regarded as the first modern Indian scientist, Jagadis Chandra Bose was a far-sighted visionary and gifted experimentalist. In 1895 in Calcutta, he publicly demonstrated wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves for the first time anywhere in the world, using the waves to ring a distant bell to thereby explode some gunpowder. The Daily Chronicle of England noted in 1896 that "The inventor (J.C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel." Bose was also the first to use a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves. According to Neville Mott "J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time" and that he had "anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors." Bose was invited by Lord Rayleigh to present his experiments at the Royal Institution in January 1897, attended by Marconi's business partner who importuned him to take out a patent and share his proceeds with him. Bose refused on the grounds that scientific discoveries must inure to the benefit of the public. Marconi's wireless transmission on Salisbury plain did not occur until May 1897. Bose also crossed from physics into biology, challenging widespread notions that these realms were different - among the fields he is regarded to have anticipated is cybernetics, through his model of memory as an information storage device. His boundless curiosity led him to study the electrical response of plants and the phenomenon of photosynthesis. Freethinking pioneer and icon, Bose was born and educated in rural Bengal and later Calcutta and achieved both a knight hood and international distinction. He was admitted to read Natural Sciences at Christ’s in 1882, took his BA in 1884 and MA in 1896.

http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/JCBOSE.htm
http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~demerson/bose/bose.html  
http://web.mit.edu/varun_ag/www/bose.html

Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509)

by Dr Frank Woodman

Educationalist, scholar and philanthropist, Margaret Beaufort was the richest woman in English Medieval history and used her wealth to promote education and religion. For a time she was considered heir to the throne by the unfortunate Henry VI, and even when this threat passed, her son Henry Tudor (her only child from the first of three marriages) was seen as the only alternative to the Yorkist King Richard III.  After the Tudor victory in 1485, Margaret assumed the title of the King’s Mother and set about supporting and financing a variety of educational, charitable and religious projects. The sponsor of Caxton and early printing, she herself translated and published the Imitation of Christ (Thomas a Kempis), while through her confessor, St. John Fisher, she was drawn into the world of Cambridge University . Margaret was the principal patron for the rebuilding of the University Church (Great St. Mary’s) and in 1505, she re-founded Godshouse as Christ’s College, fulfilling the promise of her brother-in-law Henry VI. Margaret Beaufort encouraged her son to promote the successful completion of King’s College Chapel and went on to establish the foundation of St. John’s College , completed after her death in 1509. Despite her ground-breaking role as a woman in education, Margaret remained deeply conservative in her outlook. She would have had little sympathy for the New Learning of the early sixteenth-century, although, ironically, her founding of University Lectureships at both Oxford and Cambridge in 1502 proved but one way in which such new ideas could be spread.

On 27 June 2009, almost to the day the 500th Anniversary of her death, Christ’s College celebrated the extraordinary life and generosity of Lady Margaret Beaufort.  We were delighted to welcome Dr David Starkey, Dr Francis Woodman, Professor Lisa Jardine, Dr Charles Saumarez Smith, Miss Penelope Keith, Professor Quentin Skinner, Professor David Reynolds and Professor Geoffrey Martin, on this day of celebration.

Further information about Lady Margaret Beaufort

Jones, M & Underwood, M. The King’s Mother, CUP 1992

tudorhistory.org/people/beaufort/
www.britannia.com/bios/ladies/mbeaufort.html
www.newadvent.org/cathen/02376a.htm

www.margaretbeaufort.com

The Chapel Choir sings A Spotless Rose, by Herbert Howells (MP3)

The Liturgy of Commemoration marking the 500th anniversary of the death of Lady Margaret Beaufort, 27 June 2009 (MP3) 

 
Dr David R. M. IRVING BMus (Hons), MPhil, PhD

Fellow since 2007

Junior Research Fellow

Email: drmi2 "at" cam.ac.uk

Website: http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/people/research/drmi2/

Musicologist and cultural historian David R. M. Irving researches the central role played by music in the early modern processes of intercultural exchange and globalization. He completed his doctorate at Clare College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Tess Knighton, with a study on music in the Philippines under Spanish colonial rule, 1565–1815. His first book, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. During the academic year 2009–2010 he is delivering a series of lectures at Christ’s College on The Globalization of Music: Origins, Development, & Consequences, c1500–1815. He teaches and supervises courses at the Faculty of Music on subjects including the Jesuits and music, Orientalism, historical performance practice, ethnomusicology, and general European music history.

David is Reviews Editor for the Cambridge University Press journal Eighteenth-Century Music, and is also Director of Studies in Music for Downing College, Cambridge. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has also worked as a freelance performer on early violin; he has toured and recorded with ensembles including the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, the Hanover Band, La Serenissima, the Early Opera Company, St James’s Baroque Players, La Compañía Musical, and XVIII–21 Le Baroque Nomade. He has given many recitals around the United Kingdom in collaboration with organist and harpsichordist James McVinnie.

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Dr Philip WITHINGTON

Fellow since 2008

University Lecturer, History ESRC Research Fellow (2007-2010)

Email: pjw1003 "at" cam.ac.uk

Website: http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/pjw1003@cam.ac.uk

Phil Withington was born in Yorkshire, trained as a historian in Cambridge, and worked in Aberdeen and Leeds before taking up his current position in 2008.  His research centres on the social and cultural history of early modern Britain and, increasingly, empire.  He has published extensively on urban society and citizenship; on reading early modern authors and their texts in social context; and on early modern militarism.  He also has a more general concern with inter-disciplinary approaches to the past and the relationship between language and social change.  As the holder of a three-year Research Fellowship from the ESRC he is currently pursuing two particular projects.  The first looks at intoxicants and intoxication as both trans-historical phenomena and, more particularly, as drivers of cultural, social, economic and political change in early modern Britain.  The second considers the relationship between early modernity and the development of theories and practices of 'society' in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.

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Fellow 2005-2009

Bye-Fellow 2011-12

Royal Society University Research Fellow

Email:

Website:

The earth's climate changes continuously over a wide range of time-scales. We know this because the effects of past climate changes have been varied and intense enough to leave their imprint on the geological record. It is the task of Quaternary palaeoclimatologists (i.e. geologists who deal in mud, rather than rocks) to seek out the geological clues (in lakes, bogs, caves, ice-cores and in sediments from the bottom of the sea) that may allow us to broaden our view of the climate system beyond the remit of direct (historical) observation. It was to learn more about this field of research, and undertake an MPhil course in Quaternary Science, that I came to Cambridge in 1999. Previously, I had completed an undergraduate degree in Geological Engineering (Queen's University, Canada), and after finishing the MPhil course here in Cambridge, I began a PhD project studying the causes and effects of past climate changes in the North Atlantic region, including in particular abrupt changes in the intensity of the ocean circulation cell that includes the Gulf Stream. Currently, I am carrying on this research as a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences, where my most immediate research task is to investigate how ocean circulation changes may be linked to the melting or collapse of polar ice-sheets and to variations in global atmospheric Carbon-14 and Carbon Dioxide concentrations.

 
David BUTTERFIELD BA, MPhil Cantab

Fellow since 2008

W H D Rouse Research Fellow
College Lector in Classics

Email: djb89 "at" cam.ac.uk

Website: http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/faculty/staff-bios/research_staff/david_butterfield

David Butterfield entered Christ's as a Classics undergraduate in 2003 and graduated in 2006, having specialised in Latin textual criticism, ancient philosophy and Indo-European linguistics.  He completed his MPhil at Christ's in 2007, working with Professor David Sedley on a vexed problem in Epicurean physics.  His doctoral thesis, by contrast, concerns the textual transmission of Lucretius' de rerum natura up to the Carolingian period.  During the tenure of his Fellowship he will also be working upon a critical thesaurus of Lucretian emendations, a collection of Lucretian textual adversaria and a volume of collected essays upon A E Housman.  His interests outside all things Lucretian include textual criticism, Latin literature in general, the history of Classical scholarship and the collecting of antiquarian books.  He was pre-elected to the W H D Rouse Research Fellowship in 2007 but deferred taking up the position until Michaelmas 2008.

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History of the Foundation

Statutes were first granted to the College in 1506. By modern standards these were extremely durable, surviving unchanged until 1860. Indeed, the oath which Fellows swore on admission precluded attempts to seek revocation or change to the statutes, though it did not seek to prohibit the grant of additional, supplementary statutes.

University reforms in the second half of the 19th century led to the establishment of University Commissioners, who drafted new statutes for the College in 1860. A further revision occurred in 1882; this version was the first to use English as primary language. Since that time, there has been a fairly continuous process of revision, usually through a stream of minor changes but occasionally by a complete restatement. Change has been for the most part promoted by the College, though a few alterations reflect changes in national education policy promoted by the Government of the day.

A complete redraft of the College's statutes was approved by her Majesty in Council in 1976. The statutes have been revised on a number of occasions since then, the latest occasion being in December 2024.

Statutes and Ordinances - updated December 2024

by John van Wyhe, Bye-Fellow  2005-2010

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist whose work revolutionized the life sciences. He is arguably the most famous alumnus of Christ's College.

(Left) The portrait of Darwin which hangs in the College hall is a copy (1883) by the artist, Walter William Ouless (1848-1933), of one commissioned by the Darwin family in 1875 as a birthday present for Darwin. Darwin quipped the portrait made him look like "a very venerable, acute, melancholy old dog".

Darwin's name was entered in the admissions books at Christ's on 15 October 1827.

Admissi sunt in Collegium Christi a Festo Divi Michaelis 1827 ad Festum eiusdem 1828 :
[No. 3.]
Octobris 15. Carolus Darwin admissus est pensionarius minor sub M^ro Shaw.

When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing up my gun to my shoulder before a looking-glass to see that I threw it up straight. Another and better plan was to get a friend to wave about a lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on the nipple, and if the aim was accurate the little puff of air would blow out the candle. The explosion of the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the Tutor of the College remarked, "What an extraordinary thing it is, Mr Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I often hear the crack when I pass under his windows."

Darwin graduated in the Easter Term of 1831. Although he later recalled that: "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned." It is certainly the case that Darwin became irreversibly devoted to science at Cambridge. His beetles were more than a hobby and his biological work under his mentor, Professor John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), prepared him for a life in science. Shortly afterwards he was taught the rudiments of geology by Professor Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873). It was Henslow who passed on the invitation to Darwin to accompany Captain Robert Fitzroy (1805-1865) on board the voyage of HMS Beagle as naturalist and gentleman companion.

Upon returning from the five-year voyage in 1836 Darwin returned to Cambridge to sort out his specimens for three months. He took lodgings in Fitzwilliam Street (today marked by a stone plaque). He dined often in college and regaled the fellows with tales of cannibals and his adventures. Arthur Shipley wrote in the College Magazine in 1909:

[Darwin] was apparently a good deal in college, and was evidently made a "Member of the Room," for his name occurs frequently in the Combination Room wine book. This book, which dates back to pre-Napoleonic times, is one of the few records the college retains of the presence of the great naturalist.

Darwin moved to London in 1837 to begin his life of publishing the results of his voyage, both geological and biological.

His great work On the Origin of Species (1859) demonstrated with converging evidence from geographical distribution, comparative anatomy and embryology, and the fossil record that life evolves. His theory showed how the great variety of living things are related by common genealogical descent and how all living things come to be exquisitely adapted to their environments. The most important mechanism for change was what he called 'natural selection'. This process is the necessary result of the fact that all organisms vary and are not identical copies and vastly more individuals are born than ultimately survive to breed. Therefore only a tiny minority survives to reproduce. Darwin realized that there must be something special about these surviving minorities. The success in surviving was termed selection because it was analogous to the conscious selection of farmers and breeders of which stock to perpetuate. In later works such as The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions (1872), Darwin showed that there is not an absolute difference of kind between humans and other animals, but one of degree. Although controversial at first, Darwin's work was accepted by the vast majority of naturalists during his lifetime.

Later Darwin sent his eldest son William to Christ's in the 1860s. On 17 November 1877 Darwin was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Cambridge in Senate House. Darwin died in 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

In 1909, the centenary of Darwin's birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species, celebrations were held at Christ's and the University. Darwin's rooms were made into an exhibition space with many photographs, manuscripts and other artifacts on display. Hundreds of distinguished visitors from around the world came to see the exhibition and signed their names in a book now kept in the Old Library. An American delegation presented the college with a large bronze bust of Darwin made by the sculptor William Couper for the New York Academy of Sciences in the same year. The first bust was given to the American Museum of Natural History who commissioned a copy from Couper to send to Cambridge. The bust now stands in the portico in the college grounds.

Arthur Shipley remarked in a speech at the time: "His relations to Christ's were always of the most cordial kind, and it has ever been a subject of regret to the governing body that their new statutes did not pass through Parliament in time for them to confer the only honour they could confer upon Darwin, that of an honorary Fellowship." Darwin himself recollected in his autobiography written in 1876 "Upon the whole, the three years I spent at Cambridge were the most joyful of my happy life."

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online