The University of Cambridge A New History

by Evans, G. R.

• ISBN13: 9781848851153
• ISBN10: 1848851154
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

The intertwined story of the great English 'Varsity' universities has many colourful aspects in common, yet also boasts elements of true originality. So while the histories of Oxford and Cambridge are both characterised by seething town and gown rivalries, doctrinal conflicts and heretical outbursts, shifts of political and religious allegiance and gripping stories of individual heroism and defiance, they are also narratives of difference and distinctiveness. G R Evans explores the remarkable and unique contribution that Cambridge University has made to society and culture, both in Britain and right across the globe, and will subsequently publish her history of Oxford University to complete a major new history of the two universities. Ranging across 800 years of vivid history, packed with incident, Evans here explores great thinkers such as John Duns Scotus - the 13th century Franciscan Friar who gave his name his name to 'dunces' - and celebrates the extraordinary molecular breakthroughs of Watson and Crick in the 20th century. Moving from the radical new thinking of the Cambridge Platonists and the brilliant scientific discoveries of Isaac Newton to the discovery of the Double Helix and the notorious 'Garden House Hotel Riot' of 1970, the book is published to co-incide with the 800th anniversary of the University's foundation in 1209. The first short history of its kind, it will be a lasting and treasured resource for all Cambridge alumni/ae.

Author Biography

G. R. Evans is Professor Emerita of Intellectual History and Medieval Theology in the University of Cambridge. She has written many well received books in the fields of history, the history of ideas and religion, and also serves as editor of the I.B.Tauris History of the Christian Church series.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. x
List of Illustrations	p. xiv
Cambridge in living memory: the last hundred years	p. 1
Where is the University?	p. 1
Running their own show	p. 5
Shall we let women in?	p. 12
Meeting national needs: putting Cambridge in the spotlight	p. 20
The First World War and the spectre of state inspection again	p. 24
Between the Wars	p. 34
The Second World War and a new world for Cambridge	p. 41
Student revolution, eccentric dons and the Swinging Sixties	p. 46
The Colleges and the University rethink their relationship	p. 53
Could Cambridge remain in a world of its own?	p. 61
Cambridge discovers 'administration'	p. 62
Cambridge dons lose their security	p. 66
A business-facing Cambridge?	p. 69
Intellectual Property Rights and academic freedoms	p. 76
The capsize of CAPSA	p. 80
So where are we now?	p. 82
'Do not ask the frogs before draining the pond'	p. 83
How it all began	p. 87
Europe invents universities	p. 87
How it all began in Cambridge	p. 89
Student life: the beginning of colleges	p. 101
What was it like to study for a degree in medieval Cambridge?	p. 107
The Dunce and the dunces: Cambridge as a backwater	p. 121
Cambridge and the Tudor Revolution	p. 127
Margaret Beaufort and John Fisher turn Cambridge's fortunes round	p. 127
The world as Cambridge's oyster	p. 132
Cambridge joins the 'Renaissance'	p. 135
Erasmus, Luther and a 'Reformation' Cambridge	p. 141
The Cambridge translators	p. 151
Visitations: the bid for state control of Cambridge	p. 153
Edward VI and Cambridge	p. 159
Queen Mary and the martyrs	p. 163
Queen Elizabeth, Cambridge and protestant nationhood	p. 168
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cambridge: puritans and scientists	p. 185
James I and Cambridge	p. 185
Hybrid vigour	p. 188
Applied science and 'useful' studies	p. 189
Not 'two cultures' but a single body of knowledge	p. 190
The Cambridge Platonists and the redrawing of the boundaries of theology	p. 191
Cambridge adjusts the relationship between God and nature	p. 197
Isaac Newton: a Cambridge character in close-up	p. 199
Cambridge 'networking' on the international scene	p. 210
Puritan rigour, Civil War and Restoration	p. 211
John Milton and new trends in Cambridge language study	p. 222
From logic to experimental science	p. 230
Enlightenment or marking time?	p. 240
Student Life	p. 244
The nineteenth-century transformation	p. 255
Students have fun	p. 255
The early nineteenth-century call for reform	p. 258
Scientific research becomes an academic activity with industrial outreach	p. 263
Forming the academic sciences and making them intellectually respectable	p. 267
The 'learned societies' adjust their standards	p. 269
'Call him a scientist'	p. 276
Must science exclude theology?	p. 282
Professorships and the emergence of academic specialization	p. 286
Teaching: should new 'useful' subjects replace the classics?	p. 291
Cambridge reconsiders its duty to society: the long legacy of Prince Albert's Chancellorship	p. 300
Applying science: Cambridge and the industrial uses of university research	p. 313
Widening access	p. 314
Entrances and exits	p. 324
Cambridge graduates: good men, good citizens	p. 333
Enter the Cambridge University Reporter	p. 335
Conclusion	p. 339
Notes	p. 341
Select bibliography	p. 367
Index	p. 375
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