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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US, Item: 176277816047 NOBEL PRIZE BIOLOGY SOREL BANDS MAX PERUTZ ORIGINAL ENVELOPE FROM CAMBRIDGE +. HANDWRITTEN MANUSCRIPT 9 1/2 PAGES (ON THE REVERSE OF PRINTED PAGES), 8.25 X 11.75 INCH, 1976 SCIENTIFIC CONTENT "CHANGES IN THE SOREL BAND AND IN THE VISIBLE ABSORPTION ACCOMPANYING THE R-T TRANSITION",  WRITTEN BY MAX FERDINAND PERUTZ IN BLUE ACCOMPANIED WITH ORIGINAL MAILING ENVELOPE AND COMPLIMENTS FROM MAX PERUTZ FROM THE MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL IN CAMBRIDGE ENGLAND WITH MANY CORRECTIONS BY MAX PERUTZ Max Ferdinand Perutz OM CH CBE FRS was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979.
The bare bones of Perutz's scientific story can be told briefly: In 1936 he came from Vienna to Cambridge to work on his doctorate and became involved in crystalline proteins under J.D. Bernal. After some fantastic wartime adventures (of which more later), he joined a research group in the Cavendish Physics Laboratory headed by William L. Bragg (known later as Sir Lawrence Bragg), the man who essentially “invented” crystal structure analysis and shared a Nobel Prize with his father W.H. Bragg in 1915 for this achievement. Bragg fils had achieved great things in the structures of minerals and inorganic compounds and considered that the next great challenge would be to apply his methods to the structures of proteins and other biological materials. Bragg persuaded the Medical Research Council in 1948 to support Perutz in founding a new laboratory at Cambridge for this work, and Perutz and his graduate student (and later colleague) John Kendrew embarked on their mission. Max continued to work on the four-chain molecule, hemoglobin, while John ultimately chose its one-chain cousin, myoglobin. Progress naturally was easier with the smaller molecule. Kendrew produced a low-resolution 6 Å structure of myoglobin in 1957 and the high-resolution 2 Å structure in 1959. Perutz completed a low-resolution 5.5 Å map of hemoglobin that same year and a high-resolution 2.8 Å map in 1968. In recognition of what they had accomplished, Perutz and Kendrew shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962. That same year the Nobel Prize in Biology and Medicine was awarded to Francis Crick and Jim Watson, who in 1953 had solved the structure of DNA in Max's MRC Laboratory. The year 1962 was indeed an annus mirabilis for the Medical Research Council and for Cambridge! This is the bare skeleton of the story. Georgina Ferry's great achievement is to have fleshed out this plot outline into a real drama about real people. In places the book reads like a novel, but its facts are always correct. Max Perutz was not “just” a scientist; he was a fine human being with strong family ties and with interests that ranged far beyond protein structures. In fact, an earlier interest was in the structure and mechanical properties of ice. He was an enthusiastic mountaineer and skier, at home with both granite and glaciers. While I was a postdoctoral with Kendrew in the late 1950s I once asked Max, “Since you like mountains and snow so much, why did you leave Austria to come to Cambridge?” (Topographically, Cambridge has all the character of a pool table.) Max gave a practical answer, “With my working in Cambridge, Gisela (his wife) and I can go back to Switzerland every winter to visit her family and ski to our hearts' content. If I had remained in Vienna, I couldn't have afforded the train fare to Innsbruck!” Max also was a skilled essayist. Two collections, Is Science Necessary? Essays on Science and Scientists (Dutton, 1989) and I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists and Humanity (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003) still make absorbing reading. The title of the latter collection arises from a story that Max tells about his running into the office of Sir Lawrence Bragg and informing him excitedly that he had just obtained experimental proof of the correctness of Linus Pauling's new α-helix model for protein chains. When asked what had impelled him to do the experiments, Max replied “The idea was sparked off by my fury over having missed that beautiful structure myself.” To this, Bragg replied, “I wish I had made you angry earlier!” Ferry presents this incident well, and also tells you why Bragg was so sensitive about not having been the first to arrive at the helical structure of a protein chain. The issue of whether the folded “sausages” of the low-resolution myoglobin map would turn out to be Pauling's α-helices remained. At 2 Å resolution, would they be hollow (the “garden hose” model), and would they show a helical backbone? In 1959, when we completed the high-resolution map of sperm whale myoglobin, John Kendrew celebrated with a garden party at dusk on the lawn of Peterhouse. The electron density sections through the protein were drawn on Plexiglas and stacked atop a light box. I watched Bragg excitedly drag one attendee after another over to the map, point at one particular helix that moved diagonally down the Plexiglas stack, and exclaim excitedly, “Look! Look! It's hollow!” Max's contributions during World War II are curious, and again Ferry tells them well. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Austrian citizens in England such as Max Perutz suddenly became “enemy aliens.” Max was questioned and deemed not to be a threat. But 2 years later when Germany invaded Norway and the Netherlands, Britain reacted by rounding up nearly 7000 Austrian and German men over the age of 16, Max among them, and shipped them off to internment camps in Canada! When they heard of this, both Linus Pauling at Caltech and Martin Buerger at MIT quickly offered Max a visiting fellowship, and the Rockefeller Foundation agreed to fund it. But his colleagues in Britain had been raising a storm of protest, and by the middle of January 1941 Max was safely back in Cambridge. Max later wrote up the entire episode entitled “Enemy Alien” in the August 12, 1985, issue of the New Yorker and included a revised and expanded version in both Is Science Necessary? and I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier. By an odd twist of fate, Max found himself back in Canada again (and the United States as well), as an expert on the structures and properties of ice, part of a fantastic program to build floating iceberg airfields in the North Atlantic. The organizer of this plan was Geoffrey Pyke, and the iron-hard frozen mixture of sawdust and water was known as “pykrete.” Max was recruited because of his knowledge of ice and glaciers. The project, not surprisingly, came to nothing. One such airfield of reinforced ice would have been 26 times as heavy as the Queen Elizabeth. Again, Ferry tells the story well and illustrates it with contemporary drawings of the proposed frozen aircraft carrier. Max himself wrote everything up after the fact in a 1947 scientific paper for the Journal of Glaciology entitled “A Description of the Iceberg Aircraft Carrier and the Bearing of the Mechanical Properties of Frozen Wood Pulp upon Some Problems of Glacier Flow.” This surely must be Max's least-cited paper, but he includes it in a collection of his scientific papers entitled Science Is Not a Quiet Life: Unraveling the Atomic Mechanism of Haemoglobin (Imperial College Press, 1997). Ferry does a magnificent job of expressing the doubts, difficulties, and uncertainty of Max Perutz's life. Too often “official” biographies have an unrealistically orderly tone: I got up one morning. I had an inspiration. I ran some experiments. I discovered something new and exciting. I published my findings. I received a Nobel Prize. This is far from describing Perutz's life. He began as an upper middle-class child in Vienna, Jewish by ancestry but Catholic by upbringing. He entered the University of Vienna in 1932 at the age of 18, to commence a 7-year program in chemistry that ultimately would conclude with a doctorate. After 3 years he became disillusioned with the intellectual and political atmosphere in Vienna and longed to move to Cambridge to work with the chemist Frederick Hopkins, who had earned a Nobel Prize in physiology in 1929 for his work on vitamins. His mentor in Vienna, Hermann Mark, inexplicably forgot to contact Hopkins to tell him that Max was coming to visit. But while in Cambridge he did meet the physicist and crystallographer J.D. Bernal and was so captivated by the research that he applied and was accepted into Bernal's group in 1936. When Hitler annexed Austria 2 years later, Max's parents and siblings had to flee the country quickly. His brother was a businessman in Prague and happened to have a car with Czech license plates, so parents, brother, and sister grabbed what they could carry and drove north. His brother and sister later elected to flee from Prague to the United States, but his parents went to Zurich, from where they depended on Max to get them into Britain somehow. He succeeded, but the unemployed business executive and the upper-class society wife found little in England to their pleasure. Georgina Ferry relates one aspect of this anti-Nazi exodus that I cannot avoid passing on. It concerns Hermann Mark, Max's mentor. “Mark and his wife also arrived in London via a ‘skiing holiday’ in Switzerland, having converted his wealth into platinum wire which he disguised as coat hangers.” Max's parents, unfortunately, brought no coat hangers with them, and life was difficult at first. Skipping over the Canadian internment and the pykrete mess that have already been described, Max found himself after the war's end still in a junior position at Cambridge with no permanent university appointment and no job security. When John Kendrew came to work with him in 1946, he had to be enrolled officially under W.H. Taylor, the head of the Crystallography Division, because Max had no university status. It was not until the Medical Research Council funded the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1948 that Max acquired a permanent Cambridge University appointment. There were no guiding spirits to whisper to the Cambridge administration, “Hire this man. In another 14 years he will win the Nobel Prize!” Max's research also did not go smoothly. His first “pillbox” model for hemoglobin was dead wrong. Bragg, Kendrew, and Perutz failed to beat Pauling to the α-helix, although if they had given their published fourfold helix a little less twist to 3.6 residues per turn, they would have had it. By the mid-1950s they were at an impasse. The best of conventional techniques, Patterson analysis, failed with such a complex molecule. And then Max had a flash of inspiration that led him and John straight to Stockholm. In 1936, the year Max first came to Cambridge, a Glasgow crystallographer named J.M. Robertson had solved the structure of phthalocyanine, using a new method to surmount what was called the “phase problem.” (If you really want a nonmathematical explanation of what this entailed, see my book, Present at the Flood: How Structural Molecular Biology Came About, Sinauer Associates, 2005.) Robertson bound a heavy metal atom to the phthalocyanine molecule, measured the changes in intensities of reflections in the X-ray pattern, and used this information to break the phase paradox. But phthalocyanine has only 40 atoms (not counting hydrogens); hemoglobin has roughly 4800, or 120 times as many. No one believed that binding even the heaviest metal atom to hemoglobin could produce visible changes in X-ray intensities. No one, that is, except Max. With Vernon Ingram's help, he prepared derivatives of hemoglobin in which each molecule had added to it two atoms of either silver or mercury. The consequence was large and measurable changes in X-ray intensities, and this isomorphous replacement process led to a solution of the phase problem and calculation of an electron density map of the protein. Green, Ingram, and Perutz published their paper in 1954: “The Structure of Haemoglobin IV. Sign Determination by the Isomorphous Replacement Method” (Proc. Roy. Soc A 225: 287) and the battle essentially was over. We knew how to solve protein structures. (A footnote to the title page of that paper observes that Perutz was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1954. Wise move.) Ferry's book is especially valuable in telling us about Max's early years, before he and his laboratory became famous, and in conveying the personal drama behind the bare outline that I have sketched above. Later matters are also covered in Horace Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation (Simon and Schuster, 1979), Soraya de Chadarevian's Designs for Life (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and my own Present at the Flood. Judson covers the entire field of molecular biology, not just structure. Chadarevian focuses primarily on achievements in protein and DNA structure at Cambridge University (admittedly, the most formidable player). Flood is a collection of reprints of key papers, and explanations of them, covering a period roughly from 1933 to 1963. In all of these sources Max Perutz plays a major role. But only in Ferry's book is he placed at the center of attention, and only her book conveys so much of what Max was really like. Unreservedly recommended! MAX PERUTZ OM, who has died aged 87, won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1962 after solving the molecular structure of haemoglobin, the red protein in blood that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body's tissues; he also founded Britain's most successful research institute, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge. Some of the world's most important molecular biologists spent the formative periods of their careers at the LMB, which Perutz ensured had a canteen where scientists could discuss their problems over coffee, lunch and tea; it was an innovation copied by molecular biology labs all over the world. When Perutz began his research in 1937 at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, techniques for determining organic molecular structures were still in their infancy. The Cavendish used X-ray crystallography, a technique invented in 1912 which involves rotating a single crystal of a substance slowly in a narrow beam of X-rays; as the rays emerge, they strike a photographic plate, producing a series of spots. When interpreted mathematically, their position and darkness allows the scientist to reconstruct the position of the linked atoms that form the crystal. The drawback was that while this produced acceptable results with simple substances, it proved a clumsy tool for dealing with such a complex substance as haemoglobin. The haemoglobin molecule is extremely large and consists of around 10,000 atoms connected to one another in chains; the molecules change their structure as haemoglobin exchanges oxygen for carbon dioxide as it works its way around the body. For 16 years Perutz's research left him far from his objective. However, in 1953 he introduced mercury into a crystal of haemoglobin which changed the X-ray pattern significantly from that of unadulterated crystals. By making comparisons he showed for the first time that it would be possible to deduce the complex X-ray pattern of a protein crystal and produce a model of a molecule's structure. This solution to the so-called "phase problem" was a fundamental breakthrough that led on to the solution of the structure of thousands of proteins, the building blocks and machinery of the cell. It has allowed biological processes to be understood at the atomic level. Even with this new method, it took another six years of feeding data into a computer before Perutz and his assistants achieved the long-awaited breakthrough. The first three-dimensional picture of the haemoglobin molecule - four chains of amino acids beautifully knitted together like a jigsaw - emerged from the Cambridge University computer one night in September 1959. "It was an overwhelming experience to see a vital part of ourselves that is a thousand times smaller than anything visible under a light microscope revealed in detail for the first time," Perutz recalled, "like the first glimpse of a new continent after a long and hazardous voyage." For him that moment of discovery felt "like falling in love and reaching the top of a high mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy induced not by drugs but by finding the answer to one of life's great riddles". Perutz published his findings in the scientific journal Nature in February 1960 at the same time as his colleague John Kendrew's more detailed structure of the simpler myoglobin molecule. In 1962, the two men became joint winners of the Nobel prize for Chemistry. Determining the structure of haemoglobin was a first step towards understanding its physiological functions. For the next eight years, Perutz examined the way in which haemoglobin changes its form when exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide, building up an atom-by-atom picture of the two forms of haemoglobin. It acted, he revealed, as a "kind of molecular lung. We found that the molecule actually changes its shape as it combines with oxygen". The cause of the change was the shrinking and expansion of the iron atoms in haemoglobin which hold and release the oxygen molecules. Max Ferdinand Perutz was born in Vienna on May 19 1914 into an affluent Jewish family which had converted to Catholicism and made a fortune in the textile industry. He was sent to school at the Vienna Theresianum. His family hoped he would study law and enter the family business, but he embarked instead on a course in inorganic chemistry at Vienna University. It was while he was there that he lost his faith; not because of his scientific studies but because of man's brutality to man, as demonstrated by Mussolini's bombers dropping poison gas on defenceless Abyssinian villagers "just for the fun of it". Perutz decided to study for his PhD at Cambridge after hearing about work being done there in the field of X-ray crystallography. In 1936, he joined the Cavendish Laboratory to work under Professor J D Bernal, where, he later reflected, he was a chemist studying a biological problem in a physics department. At first, he relied on his parents for support, but after the Nazis annexed Austria, the family business was expropriated and Perutz found himself destitute. Just when it seemed he must abandon his work, he was appointed a salaried research assistant to Sir Lawrence Bragg, Cavendish Professor of Physics. Perutz's work in the Second World War sprang from his enthusiasm for ski-ing and interest in the crystal texture and flow mechanism of glaciers, which he liked to demonstrate with blancmange. Since aircraft did not have the range to cross the Atlantic early in the war, American planes had to be shipped in parts for reassembly in Britain, which meant that many were lost to U-boats. Perutz was assigned to work on an airbase made of ice which could be established in mid-Atlantic for Lord Louis Mountbatten's Combined Operations HQ. His task was to find ways of making ice stronger and less brittle. After first attempts failed, he read a report that American researchers had discovered that the brittleness of ice disappears on freezing a mixture of ice and woodpulp called "pykrete". Working in a large underground cold store at Smithfield market, Perutz confirmed that pykrete was, weight for weight, as strong as concrete and, unlike pure ice, did not shatter. However, he also discovered that it sagged slowly under its own weight unless cooled to -15 C. Plans to build a giant 2.2 million ton iceberg ship on Newfoundland went ahead all the same; its rudder was to have the height of a 15-storey building and the vast ice block was to have been propelled into position by 26 electric motors, each of more than 1,200 horsepower. The project was eventually abandoned after American engineers calculated that the amount of steel needed to freeze the pykrete would be greater than the amount needed to build an entire ship made of steel. Resuming his work on haemoglobin after the war, Perutz secured a research fellowship from ICI; two years later the importance of his work was recognised when the Medical Research Council began to support his work in the Cavendish Laboratory with a grant. At first, Perutz and Kendrew made up the entire staff of the molecular biology unit group. But other scientists soon joined them, including Francis Crick and Jim Watson, who also won a Nobel in 1962 for their discovery of the structure of DNA; on seeing their double helix for the first time Perutz described it "as beautiful as the Matterhorn". In 1957 the name of the unit was changed to the Molecular Biology Unit, and with Perutz as director, it moved to an unprepossessing 40 ft by 12 ft wartime hut behind the Cavendish. Five years later, it moved again into new quarters at the Cambridge Postgraduate Medical School and became the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, with Perutz as its chairman. In 1968, he published further research on genetic abnormalities in haemoglobins which cause certain blood and respiratory diseases. He retained his interests into old age, entitling his 1998 book of essays I Wish I had Made You Angry Earlier, because those were Bragg's words when Perutz achieved an important result after being roused to fury by Linus Pauling's (false) claim to have beaten him to the first structure of the alpha-helix. When interviewed on Desert Island Discs in 2000, Perutz chose Darwin's Origin of Species as his book and a pair of skis as his luxury, adding: "You never know, it might snow." He continued going into the laboratory almost every day until Christmas. When looking last September at a slide of protein from an egg, which had puzzled him since the 1930s, he suddenly saw a way to a solution. For the next three months he wrote no letters while he worked solidly on it; the resulting paper was dispatched to an American journal an hour before he went into Addenbrooke's Hospital. It was "a marvellous crescendo and finale," he told friends. Perutz insisted that young scientists should be given full responsibility and credit for their own work - a radical notion when the LMB was founded. He would make a point of sitting next to students whom he did not recognise at lunch to learn about their experiments. He also proved an arresting speaker, with a strong sense of drama, when he delivered the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures. Children were on the edge of their seats to see if his experiments worked, which they always did - in the end. Perutz was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, and in 1971 was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He was an honorary fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, from 1962 and in 1981 was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, advising the Pope on scientific issues. From 1973 to 1979 he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Davy Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Institution. Perutz laid plans for his death with his customary efficiency. He briefed his biographer, and wrote letters to the dozen or so people who had been most important in his life, such as the Queen and Lady Thatcher, to thank them for their help and friendship. He was appointed CBE in 1963, CH in 1975 and OM in 1988. He married, in 1942, Gisela Peiser; they had a son and a daughter. “'In Science truth always wins' MFP.” So reads the inscription on a plaque in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which was unveiled on the afternoon of his funeral. That simple, direct statement sums up Max the scientist and Max the person. Max sought the truth in science and what was right and worthwhile in life. The first half of his life was dedicated to what then seemed the impossible central problem in structural biology — solving the structure of proteins at atomic resolution. The second half saw him blossom further as a scientist, possibly doing his best work after receiving his Nobel Prize; he became an accomplished writer, an ambassador for science and a champion for human rights. He was an inspirational character to scientists and non-scientists alike. 1914 – 2002 Nobel Prize winning work The discovery of X-ray diffraction by wet protein crystals inspired a generation of scientists to look for ways of translating that information to protein structure. However, the interpretation of X-ray diffraction patterns requires knowing not only the intensities and direction of the diffracted rays, which could be directly measured, but also their phases, which remained the stumbling block. The phase problem was unsolved until Perutz, after nearly two decades of effort (punctuated by World War II) introduced the procedure of isomorphous replacement in 1954. It then required some five more years of intense effort to solve the structures of myoglobin, by colleague John Kendrew, and hemoglobin, by Max. It was an accomplishment for which they shared the Nobel Prize in 1962. Soon afterwards, David Phillips and colleagues solved the structure of lysozyme. Then came α-chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase B and ribonuclease A, opening the floodgates of three-dimensional protein structures. Had Max stopped being a scientist at that point, his place in history would have been secure as the founding father of one of the most successful and important fields in science and arguably the most important in biology. But, he viewed structure as just the springboard to understanding function. From structure to function Knowing the three-dimensional structure of proteins impacted on crystallographers and biochemists in strikingly different ways. Sadly, some of the traditional enzymologists turned their backs on the new information until it was impossible to ignore and others turned to systems that they thought were beyond the reach of protein crystallography. But at the same time, a young generation of scientists flooded into the protein crystallography field, and a not insignificant number have made pre-Christmas trips to Stockholm. Some very bright young protein scientists were inspired to devise new methods and experiments to exploit the new structural information. Many crystallographers honed their skills to produce a large series of structures and far more complex ones. Meanwhile, Max set about solving the allosteric mechanism of hemoglobin for, with his unerring insight, he had chosen a protein that was ideal for bridging the gap between structure and function before the widespread use of present day protein engineering techniques — it was the cracking of crystals of deoxyhemoglobin on oxygenation that had first attracted him toward this protein. It was at this stage, the second part of his career, that I got to know Max personally. I joined the MRC in 1969 and shared a tiny laboratory with him. Max would come into the lab at 9:30 each morning, having finished his administration for the day, and proceed to perform ingenious biophysical experiments. His former research student would lecture Max (as if he were the student!) on how to do experiments. His humility, warmth and engaging eccentricities — we have fond memories of Max warming bananas in the 37 °C oven during those less safety conscious days — his obvious enthusiasm and quick intelligence made it easy for him to collaborate with others. He rapidly embraced new techniques, such as NMR and other new methods of increasing sophistication. He became the first molecular pathologist, analyzing the effects of natural mutations on the oxygen affinity of hemoglobin and related pathologies, including sickle cell anemia. By analyzing the large number of natural hemoglobin mutants isolated from patients, analyzing hemoglobins from other species and altering specific amino acid residues by protein chemistry and eventually protein engineering, Max was able to solve the mechanisms of the Bohr effect and the allosteric transition of hemoglobin. This was his second great triumph, using structure as the starting point for functional analysis of a protein. The latter years: Huntington's disease Max's final research project, and his consuming passion in his last years, was the role of polyglutamine repeats in Huntington's disease. He first postulated a 'polar zipper' model, and in his last six months interpreted diffraction data to give a general model for amyloid structure. Two papers describing these results, entitled “Aggregation of proteins with expanded glutamine and alanine repeats, of the glutamine-rich and asparagine-rich domains of Sup35, and of the amyloid β-peptide of amyloid plaques” and “Amyloid fibers are water-filled nanotubes” are now in press in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. These papers were finished just ten minutes before Max was admitted to Addenbrookes' Hospital for emergency surgery. He had delayed admission from that morning to the afternoon. Max was elated to have ended his career on a high point. Max the teacher, the writer and the person Max taught by example, communicating to his audiences with clarity and infectious enthusiasm, and by directly encouraging and helping young scientists. He taught many of us how to write and always found time to read our papers and correct them with his unmistakable scrawl. Early versions would come back covered in red ink, with pointers on how to write clearly and questions about the science and the presentation. After a few such lessons, the return of an unmarked manuscript showed that one had graduated in the art of communicating scientific achievements. Max was a prolific writer, producing some 42 articles, reviews and comments for the New York Review of Books between 1981 and 2001. These vary from his reviews of books, especially biographies of scientists, defense of contraception and other more general articles. It is these writings that perhaps best reveal many aspects of his character and interests. As an example, I refer you to his review of Five days in London, May 1940 by John Lukacs (Yale University Press; 2001), which detailed the crucial days in which Churchill persuaded the British Cabinet not to acquiesce to Hitler but instead to begin the battle that would eventually save western civilization. Exiled from Austria for being a Jew, Max was intensely upset at being interned and deported from Britain at the beginning of World War II for being an Austrian. It was Churchill who had demanded “Collar the lot”, and 7,500 internees and aliens of German, Austrian or Italian origin were selected for shipping to Canada and Australia in mid 1940 despite many of them being of Jewish extraction. Whereas others would hold this against Churchill, Max, who had suffered directly from these events, held Churchill in the highest regard. This review, in which Max warmly appreciated Churchill, thus illuminates a central element of Max's character: he saw the good in all people objectively, without holding grudges and with unswerving loyalty to his friends. Max's flair for writing was a late development. Leo Perutz, the distinguished writer and a relative, once told Max when he was a boy that he would never be a writer, and so one of his most cherished awards was one for scientific writing. “I wish I had made you angry earlier” (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1998) contains a marvelous selection of his essays on science, scientists and humanity. Although mild and kindly by nature, he would defend attacks on his science or scientists like a mother bear defending her cubs. He would not flinch from defending scientists whose human rights were threatened. The legacy of Max Perutz Max is really the father to us all in structural biology: he solved a protein structure, analyzed it to understand its functional mechanism at atomic detail, looked at the role of mutations in disease and thought about drug design. And he did it first! The character of a scientist is often transmitted though the generations. One can learn a lot about a scientist from the behavior of his students and his students' students. Protein crystallography is one of the least fractious and most supportive branches of science, which is a not insignificant factor in its success. Structural biology and its students are Max's lasting legacy. He knew his legacy and so died a happy and fulfilled man, surrounded by his family and a constant stream of old friends who came to his bedside to pay their last respects and whom he thanked personally for their friendship. He is survived by a devoted family whose support was an integral part of his success. ax Ferdinand Perutz was born in Vienna on May 19th, 1914. Both his parents, Hugo Perutz and Dely Goldschmidt, came from families of textile manufacturers who had made their fortune in the 19th century by the introduction of mechanical spinning and weaving into the Austrian monarchy. He was sent to school at the Theresianum, a grammar school derived from an officers academy of the days of the empress Maria Theresia, and his parents suggested that he should study law in preparation for entering the family business. However, a good schoolmaster awakened his interest in chemistry, and he had no difficulty in persuading his parents to let him study the subject of his choice. In 1932, he entered Vienna University, where he, in his own words, “wasted five semesters in an exacting course of inorganic analysis”. His curiosity was aroused, however, by organic chemistry, and especially by a course of organic biochemistry, given by F. von Wessely, in which Sir F.G. Hopkins’ work at Cambridge was mentioned. It was here that Perutz decided that Cambridge was the place where he wanted to work for his Ph.D. thesis. With financial help from his father he became a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge under J.D. Bernal in September 1936, and he has stayed at Cambridge ever since. After Hitler’s invasion in Austria and Czechoslovakia, the family business was expropriated, his parents became refugees, and his own funds were soon exhausted. He was saved by being appointed research assistant to Sir Lawrence Bragg, under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, on January 1st, 1939. The grant continued, with various interruptions due to the war, until 1945, when Perutz was given an Imperial Chemical Industries Research Fellowship. In October 1947, he was made head of the newly constituted Medical Research Council Unit for Molecular Biology, with J.C. Kendrew representing its entire staff. He continued holding this post until he was made Chairman of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in March 1962. His collaboration with Sir Lawrence Bragg has continued through all these years. The scientific work of Perutz on the structure of haemoglobin started as a result of a conversation with F. Haurowitz in Prague, in September 1937. G.S. Adair made him the first crystals of horse haemoglobin, and Bernal and I. Fankuchen showed him how to take X-ray pictures and how to interpret them. Early in 1938, Bernal, Fankuchen, and Perutz [Nature, 141 (1938) 523] published a joint paper on X-ray diffraction from crystals of haemoglobin and chymotrypsin. The chymotrypsin crystals were twinned and therefore difficult to work with, and so Perutz continued with haemoglobin. D. Keilin, then Professor of Biology and Parasitology at Cambridge, soon became interested in the work and provided Perutz and his colleagues with the biochemical laboratory facilities which they lacked at the Cavendish. Thus from 1938 until the early fifties the protein chemistry was done at Keilin’s Molteno Institute and the X-ray work at the Cavendish, with Perutz busily bridging the gap between biology and physics on his bicycle. The rest of the story is well-known and forms the subject of his Nobel discourse. Perutz has persued one sideline concerned with glaciers, studying their crystal texture and mechanism of flow, but this was mainly an excuse for working in the mountains: he is a keen mountaineer, his other recreations being walking, skiing and gardening. Scientifically, his overwhelming interest lies on the side of molecular biology. He is grateful for having had the good fortune of being joined by colleagues of great ability, several of whom have now been honoured with the Nobel Prize at the same time as Perutz himself. Kendrew came in 1946, Crick in 1948, and Watson arrived as a visitor in 1951. Recently F. Sanger, who received the Nobel Prize in 1958, also joined forces with them. Perutz is extremely happy at the generous recognition given by the Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Karolinska Institute to their great common adventures and hopes that it will spur them to new endeavours. Perutz, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was made Commander of the British Empire in 1962. He is also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1942, Perutz married Gisela Peiser. They have two children, Vivien (b. 1944) and Robin (b. 1949). Max Ferdinand Perutz OM CH CBE FRS (19 May 1914 – 6 February 2002)[4] was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Perutz's contributions to molecular biology in Cambridge are documented in The History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4 (1870 to 1990) published by the Cambridge University Press in 1992. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career and research 2.1 World War 2 2.2 Establishment of the Molecular Biology Unit 2.3 DNA structure and Rosalind Franklin 2.4 The author 2.5 The scientist-citizen 2.6 Honours and awards 2.7 Lectures 2.8 Books by Max Perutz 3 Personal life 4 References 5 Bibliography 6 External links Early life and education Perutz was born in Vienna, the son of Adele "Dely" (Goldschmidt) and Hugo Perutz, a textile manufacturer.[5][6] His parents were Jewish by ancestry, but had baptised Perutz in the Catholic religion.[7][8][9] Although Perutz rejected religion and was an atheist in his later years, he was against offending others for their religious beliefs.[10][11] His parents hoped that he would become a lawyer, but he became interested in chemistry while at school. Overcoming his parents' objections he enrolled as a chemistry undergraduate at the University of Vienna and completed his degree in 1936. Made aware by lecturer Fritz von Wessely of the advances being undertaken at the University of Cambridge into biochemistry by a team led by Gowland Hopkins, he asked Professor Mark who was soon to visit Cambridge to make inquiries to Hopkins about whether there would be a place for him. Mark forgot, but had visited J.D. Bernal, who was looking for a research student to assist him with studies into X-ray crystallography.[12] Perutz was dismayed as he knew nothing about the subject. Mark countered by saying that he would soon learn. Bernal accepted him as a research student in his crystallography research group at the Cavendish Laboratory. His father had deposited £500 with his London agent to support him. He learnt quickly. Bernal encouraged him to use the X-ray diffraction method to study the structure of proteins. As protein crystals were difficult to obtain he used horse haemoglobin crystals, and began his doctoral thesis on its structure. Haemoglobin was a subject which was to occupy him for most of his professional career. He completed his Ph.D. under Lawrence Bragg.[citation needed] Career and research Rejected by Kings and St John's colleges he applied to and became a member of Peterhouse, on the basis that it served the best food. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse in 1962. He took a keen interest in the Junior Members, and was a regular and popular speaker at the Kelvin Club, the College's scientific society. World War 2 When Hitler took over Austria in 1938, Perutz's parents managed to escape to Switzerland, but they had lost all of their money. As a result, Perutz lost their financial support. With his ability to ski, experience in mountaineering since childhood and his knowledge of crystals, Perutz was accepted as a member of a three-man team to study the conversion of snow into ice in Swiss glaciers in the summer of 1938. His resulting article for the Proceedings of the Royal Society made him known as an expert on glaciers.[13] Lawrence Bragg who was Professor of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish, thought that Perutz's research into haemoglobin had promise and encouraged him to apply for a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to continue his research. The application was accepted in January 1939 and with the money Perutz was able to bring his parents from Switzerland in March 1939 to England.[13] On the outbreak of World War II Perutz was rounded up along with other persons of German or Austrian background, and sent to Newfoundland (on orders from Winston Churchill).[14] After being interned for several months he returned to Cambridge. Because of his previous research into the changes in the arrangement of the crystals in the different layers of a glacier before the War he was asked for advice on whether if a battalion of commandos were landed in Norway, could they be hidden in shelters under glaciers. His knowledge on the subject of ice then led to him in 1942 being recruited for Project Habakkuk. This was a secret project to build an ice platform in mid-Atlantic, which could be used to refuel aircraft. To that end he investigated the recently invented mixture of ice and woodpulp known as pykrete. He carried out early experiments on pykrete in a secret location underneath Smithfield Meat Market in the City of London. Establishment of the Molecular Biology Unit After the War he returned briefly to glaciology. He demonstrated how glaciers flow.[15][16][17][18][19] In 1947 Perutz, with the support of Professor Bragg was successful in obtaining support from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to undertake research into the molecular structure of biological systems. This financial support allowed him to establish the Molecular Biology Unit at the Cavendish Laboratory.[20] Perutz's new unit attracted researchers who realised that the field of molecular biology had great promise, among them were Francis Crick in 1949 and James D. Watson in 1951. In 1953 Perutz showed that diffracted X-rays from protein crystals could be phased by comparing the patterns from crystals of the protein with and without heavy atoms attached. In 1959 he employed this method to determine the molecular structure of the protein haemoglobin, which transports oxygen in the blood.[21] This work resulted in his sharing with John Kendrew the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nowadays the molecular structures of several thousand proteins are determined by X-ray crystallography every year. After 1959, Perutz and his colleagues went on to determine the structure of oxy- and deoxy- haemoglobin at high resolution. As a result, in 1970, he was at last able to suggest how it works as a molecular machine: how it switches between its deoxygenated and its oxygenated states, in turn triggering the uptake of oxygen and then its release to the muscles and other organs. Further work over the next two decades refined and corroborated the proposed mechanism. In addition Perutz studied the structural changes in a number of haemoglobin diseases and how these might affect oxygen binding. He hoped that the molecule could be made to function as a drug receptor and that it would be possible to inhibit or reverse the genetic errors such as those that occur in sickle cell anaemia. A further interest was the variation of the haemoglobin molecule from species to species to suit differing habitats and patterns of behaviour. In his final years Perutz turned to the study of changes in protein structures implicated in Huntington and other neurodegenerative diseases. He demonstrated that the onset of Huntington disease is related to the number of glutamine repeats as they bind to form what he called a polar zipper.[22] DNA structure and Rosalind Franklin Perutz with his wife Gisela at the 1962 Nobel ball During the early 1950s, while Watson and Crick were determining the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), they made use of unpublished X-ray diffraction images taken by Rosalind Franklin, shown at meetings and shared with them by Maurice Wilkins, and of Franklin's preliminary account of her detailed analysis of the X-ray images included in an unpublished 1952 progress report for the King's College laboratory of Sir John Randall. Randall and others eventually criticised the manner in which Perutz gave a copy of this report to Watson and Crick. It is debatable whether Watson and Crick should have been granted access to Franklin's results without her knowledge or permission, and before she had a chance to publish a detailed analysis of the content of her unpublished progress report. It is also not clear how important the content of that report had been for Watson and Crick's modelling. In an effort to clarify this issue, Perutz later published the report, arguing that it included nothing that Franklin had not said in a talk she gave in late 1951, which Watson had attended. Perutz also added that the report was addressed to an MRC committee created to "establish contact between the different groups of people working for the Council". Randall's and Perutz's labs were both funded by the MRC. The author In his later years, Perutz was a regular reviewer/essayist for The New York Review of Books on biomedical subjects. Many of these essays are reprinted in his 1998 book I wish I had made you angry earlier.[23] In August 1985 The New Yorker also published his account tiled "That Was the War: Enemy Alien" of his experiences as an internee during World War 2. Perutz's flair for writing was a late development. His relative Leo Perutz, a distinguished writer, told Max when he was a boy that he would never be a writer, an unwarranted judgement, as demonstrated by Perutz's remarkable letters written as an undergraduate. They are published in What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz. Perutz was delighted to win the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science in 1997. The scientist-citizen Perutz attacked the theories of philosophers Sir Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn and biologist Richard Dawkins in a lecture given at Cambridge on 'Living Molecules' in 1994. He criticised Popper's notion that science progresses through a process of hypothesis formation and refutation, saying that hypotheses are not necessarily the basis of scientific research and, in molecular biology at least, they are not necessarily subject to revision either. For Perutz, Kuhn's notion that science advances in paradigm shifts that are subject to social and cultural pressures is an unfair representation of modern science. These criticisms extended to scientists who attack religion, in particular to Richard Dawkins. Statements which offend religious faith were for Perutz tactless and simply damage the reputation of science. They are of quite a different order to criticism of the demonstrably false theory of creationism. He concluded that "even if we do not believe in God, we should try to live as though we did."[24] Within days of the 11 September attacks in 2001, Perutz wrote to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, appealing to him not to respond with military force: "I am alarmed by the American cries for vengeance and concerned that President Bush's retaliation will lead to the death of thousands more innocent people, driving us into a world of escalating terror and counter-terror. I do hope that you can use your restraining influence to prevent this happening."[25] Honours and awards Perutz was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1954.[4] In addition to the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962, which he shared with John Kendrew for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin, Max Perutz received a number of other important honours: he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963, received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1967, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971, appointed a Companion of Honour in 1975, received the Copley Medal in 1979 and the Order of Merit in 1988. Perutz was made a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1964, received an Honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna (1965) and received the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1967.[26] He was elected to EMBO Membership in 1964.[1] Lectures In 1980 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Chicken, the Egg and the Molecules. The Nobel Prize (/ˈnoʊbɛl/ NOH-bel; Swedish: Nobelpriset [nʊˈbɛ̂lːˌpriːsɛt]; Norwegian: Nobelprisen [nʊˈbɛ̀lːpriːsn̩]) is not a single prize but five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to ”those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace (Nobel characterized the Peace Prize as "to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses").[1] In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) established the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.[1] [2] [3] Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.[4][5] Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.[1] The prize ceremonies take place annually. Each recipient (known as a "laureate") receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a monetary award. In 2020, the Nobel Prize monetary award is 10,000,000 SEK, or US$1,145,000, or €968,000, or £880,000.[6] A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people.[7] Although Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, the prize is presented.[8] The Nobel Prizes, beginning in 1901, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, beginning in 1969, have been awarded 603 times to 962 people and 25 organizations.[1] Four individuals have received more than one Nobel Prize.[9] Contents 1 History 1.1 Nobel Foundation 1.1.1 Formation of Foundation 1.1.2 Foundation capital and cost 1.2 Inaugural Nobel prizes 1.3 Second World War 1.4 Prize in Economic Sciences 2 Award process 2.1 Nominations 2.2 Selection 2.3 Posthumous nominations 2.4 Recognition time lag 3 Award ceremonies 3.1 Nobel Banquet 3.2 Nobel lecture 4 Prizes 4.1 Medals 4.2 Diplomas 4.3 Award money 5 Controversies and criticisms 5.1 Controversial recipients 5.2 Overlooked achievements 5.3 Emphasis on discoveries over inventions 5.4 Gender disparity 6 Facts 7 Specially distinguished laureates 7.1 Multiple laureates 7.2 Family laureates 8 Refusals and constraints 9 Cultural impact 10 See also 11 References 11.1 Citations 11.2 Sources 11.2.1 Books 12 Further reading 13 External links History A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair. Alfred Nobel had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, which was titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. Alfred Nobel (About this soundlisten (help·info)) was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.[10] He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.[11] In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. It was Alfred's brother Ludvig who had died; the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will.[12] On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 63 years old.[13] Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895.[14][15] To widespread astonishment, Nobel's last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.[16] Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million, €150 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes.[17][18] Owing to skepticism surrounding the will, it was not approved by the Storting in Norway until 26 April 1897.[19] The executors of the will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of the fortune and to organise the awarding of prizes.[20] Nobel's instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organizations were designated. These were Karolinska Institute on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June.[21] The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded; and, in 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II.[16] In 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved. Nobel Foundation Formation of Foundation Main article: Nobel Foundation A paper with stylish handwriting on it with the title "Testament" Alfred Nobel's will stated that 94% of his total assets should be used to establish the Nobel Prizes. According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity. The Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobel's personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed from the shares 94% of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize.[citation needed] The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organization on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.[22] In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the Foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Robert and Ludvig Nobel were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan, and according to Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archive, it was this "decision to allow withdrawal of Alfred's money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established".[23] Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to market the prizes internationally and to oversee informal administration related to the prizes. The Foundation is not involved in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates.[24][25] In many ways, the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company, in that it invests Nobel's money to create a solid funding base for the prizes and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953).[26] Since the 1980s, the Foundation's investments have become more profitable and as of 31 December 2007, the assets controlled by the Nobel Foundation amounted to 3.628 billion Swedish kronor (c. US$560 million).[27] According to the statutes, the Foundation consists of a board of five Swedish or Norwegian citizens, with its seat in Stockholm. The Chairman of the Board is appointed by the Swedish King in Council, with the other four members appointed by the trustees of the prize-awarding institutions. An Executive Director is chosen from among the board members, a Deputy Director is appointed by the King in Council, and two deputies are appointed by the trustees. However, since 1995, all the members of the board have been chosen by the trustees, and the Executive Director and the Deputy Director appointed by the board itself. As well as the board, the Nobel Foundation is made up of the prize-awarding institutions (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee), the trustees of these institutions, and auditors.[27] Foundation capital and cost The capital of the Nobel Foundation today is invested 50% in shares, 20% bonds and 30% other investments (e.g. hedge funds or real estate). The distribution can vary by 10 percent.[28] At the beginning of 2008, 64% of the funds were invested mainly in American and European stocks, 20% in bonds, plus 12% in real estate and hedge funds.[29] In 2011, the total annual cost was approximately 120 million krona, with 50 million krona as the prize money. Further costs to pay institutions and persons engaged in giving the prizes were 27.4 million krona. The events during the Nobel week in Stockholm and Oslo cost 20.2 million krona. The administration, Nobel symposium, and similar items had costs of 22.4 million krona. The cost of the Economic Sciences prize of 16.5 Million krona is paid by the Sveriges Riksbank.[28] Inaugural Nobel prizes A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair. Wilhelm Röntgen received the first Physics Prize for his discovery of X-rays. Once the Nobel Foundation and its guidelines were in place, the Nobel Committees began collecting nominations for the inaugural prizes. Subsequently, they sent a list of preliminary candidates to the prize-awarding institutions. The Nobel Committee's Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize.[30][31] In the last decades of the 19th century, many chemists had made significant contributions. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the Academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize".[32] The Academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van 't Hoff.[33] Van 't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.[34][35] The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists, and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to be awarded.[36] Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the Academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet.[37] The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then was causing thousands of deaths each year.[38][39] The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention, and jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization. Second World War In 1938 and 1939, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich forbade three laureates from Germany (Richard Kuhn, Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk) from accepting their prizes.[40] They were all later able to receive the diploma and medal.[41] Even though Sweden was officially neutral during the Second World War, the prizes were awarded irregularly. In 1939, the Peace Prize was not awarded. No prize was awarded in any category from 1940 to 1942, due to the occupation of Norway by Germany. In the subsequent year, all prizes were awarded except those for literature and peace.[42] During the occupation of Norway, three members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee fled into exile. The remaining members escaped persecution from the Germans when the Nobel Foundation stated that the Committee building in Oslo was Swedish property. Thus it was a safe haven from the German military, which was not at war with Sweden.[43] These members kept the work of the Committee going, but did not award any prizes. In 1944, the Nobel Foundation, together with the three members in exile, made sure that nominations were submitted for the Peace Prize and that the prize could be awarded once again.[40] Prize in Economic Sciences Main article: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Map of Nobel laureates by country In 1968, Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank celebrated its 300th anniversary by donating a large sum of money to the Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a prize in honour of Alfred Nobel. The following year, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded for the first time. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences became responsible for selecting laureates. The first laureates for the Economics Prize were Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes".[44][45] The Board of the Nobel Foundation decided that after this addition, it would allow no further new prizes.[46] Award process The award process is similar for all of the Nobel Prizes, the main difference being who can make nominations for each of them.[47] File:Announcement Nobelprize Chemistry 2009-3.ogv The announcement of the laureates in Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 by Gunnar Öquist, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences File:Announcement Nobelprize Literature 2009-1.ogv 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement by Peter Englund in Swedish, English, and German Nominations Nomination forms are sent by the Nobel Committee to about 3,000 individuals, usually in September the year before the prizes are awarded. These individuals are generally prominent academics working in a relevant area. Regarding the Peace Prize, inquiries are also sent to governments, former Peace Prize laureates, and current or former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The deadline for the return of the nomination forms is 31 January of the year of the award.[47][48] The Nobel Committee nominates about 300 potential laureates from these forms and additional names.[49] The nominees are not publicly named, nor are they told that they are being considered for the prize. All nomination records for a prize are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of the prize.[50][51] Selection The Nobel Committee then prepares a report reflecting the advice of experts in the relevant fields. This, along with the list of preliminary candidates, is submitted to the prize-awarding institutions.[52] The institutions meet to choose the laureate or laureates in each field by a majority vote. Their decision, which cannot be appealed, is announced immediately after the vote.[53] A maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected per award. Except for the Peace Prize, which can be awarded to institutions, the awards can only be given to individuals.[54] Posthumous nominations Although posthumous nominations are not presently permitted, individuals who died in the months between their nomination and the decision of the prize committee were originally eligible to receive the prize. This has occurred twice: the 1931 Literature Prize awarded to Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and the 1961 Peace Prize awarded to UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. Since 1974, laureates must be thought alive at the time of the October announcement. There has been one laureate, William Vickrey, who in 1996 died after the prize (in Economics) was announced but before it could be presented.[55] On 3 October 2011, the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were announced; however, the committee was not aware that one of the laureates, Ralph M. Steinman, had died three days earlier. The committee was debating about Steinman's prize, since the rule is that the prize is not awarded posthumously.[8] The committee later decided that as the decision to award Steinman the prize "was made in good faith", it would remain unchanged.[56] Recognition time lag Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the awards usually recognised recent discoveries.[57] However, some of those early discoveries were later discredited. For example, Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused cancer.[58] To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the awards increasingly recognised scientific discoveries that had withstood the test of time.[59][60][61] According to Ralf Pettersson, former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine, "the criterion 'the previous year' is interpreted by the Nobel Assembly as the year when the full impact of the discovery has become evident."[60] A room with pictures on the walls. In the middle of the room there is a wooden table with chairs around it. The committee room of the Norwegian Nobel Committee The interval between the award and the accomplishment it recognises varies from discipline to discipline. The Literature Prize is typically awarded to recognise a cumulative lifetime body of work rather than a single achievement.[62][63] The Peace Prize can also be awarded for a lifetime body of work. For example, 2008 laureate Martti Ahtisaari was awarded for his work to resolve international conflicts.[64][65] However, they can also be awarded for specific recent events.[66] For instance, Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations.[67] Similarly Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres received the 1994 award, about a year after they successfully concluded the Oslo Accords.[68] Awards for physics, chemistry, and medicine are typically awarded once the achievement has been widely accepted. Sometimes, this takes decades – for example, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Physics Prize for his 1930s work on stellar structure and evolution.[69][70] Not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognised. Some discoveries can never be considered for a prize if their impact is realised after the discoverers have died.[71][72][73] Award ceremonies Two men standing on a stage. The man to the left is clapping his hands and looking towards the other man. The second man is smiling and showing two items to an audience not seen on the image. The items are a diploma which includes a painting and a box containing a gold medal. Behind them is a blue pillar clad in flowers. A man in his fifties standing behind a desk with computers on it. On the desk is a sign reading "Kungl. Vetensk. Akad. Sigil". Left: Barack Obama after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall from the hands of Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland in 2009; Right: Giovanni Jona-Lasinio presenting Yoichiro Nambu's Nobel Lecture at Aula Magna, Stockholm in 2008 Except for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Prizes are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, at the annual Prize Award Ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The recipients' lectures are normally held in the days prior to the award ceremony. The Peace Prize and its recipients' lectures are presented at the annual Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, usually on 10 December. The award ceremonies and the associated banquets are typically major international events.[74][75] The Prizes awarded in Sweden's ceremonies' are held at the Stockholm Concert Hall, with the Nobel banquet following immediately at Stockholm City Hall. The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony has been held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (1905–1946), at the auditorium of the University of Oslo (1947–1989), and at Oslo City Hall (1990–present).[76] The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm occurs when each Nobel laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of the King of Sweden. In Oslo, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway.[75][77] At first, King Oscar II did not approve of awarding grand prizes to foreigners. It is said[by whom?] that he changed his mind once his attention had been drawn to the publicity value of the prizes for Sweden.[78] Nobel Banquet Main article: Nobel Banquet A set table with a white table cloth. There are many plates and glasses plus a menu visible on the table. Table at the 2005 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm After the award ceremony in Sweden, a banquet is held in the Blue Hall at the Stockholm City Hall, which is attended by the Swedish Royal Family and around 1,300 guests. The Nobel Peace Prize banquet is held in Norway at the Oslo Grand Hotel after the award ceremony. Apart from the laureate, guests include the President of the Storting, on occasion the Swedish prime minister, and, since 2006, the King and Queen of Norway. In total, about 250 guests attend. Nobel lecture According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, each laureate is required to give a public lecture on a subject related to the topic of their prize.[79] The Nobel lecture as a rhetorical genre took decades to reach its current format.[80] These lectures normally occur during Nobel Week (the week leading up to the award ceremony and banquet, which begins with the laureates arriving in Stockholm and normally ends with the Nobel banquet), but this is not mandatory. The laureate is only obliged to give the lecture within six months of receiving the prize, but some have happened even later. For example, US President Theodore Roosevelt received the Peace Prize in 1906 but gave his lecture in 1910, after his term in office.[81] The lectures are organized by the same association which selected the laureates.[82] Prizes Medals The Nobel Foundation announced on 30 May 2012 that it had awarded the contract for the production of the five (Swedish) Nobel Prize medals to Svenska Medalj AB. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were minted by Myntverket (the Swedish Mint), Sweden's oldest company, which ceased operations in 2011 after 107 years. In 2011, the Mint of Norway, located in Kongsberg, made the medals. The Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation.[83] Each medal features an image of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse. The medals for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature have identical obverses, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death. Nobel's portrait also appears on the obverse of the Peace Prize medal and the medal for the Economics Prize, but with a slightly different design. For instance, the laureate's name is engraved on the rim of the Economics medal.[84] The image on the reverse of a medal varies according to the institution awarding the prize. The reverse sides of the medals for chemistry and physics share the same design.[85] A heavily decorated paper with the name "Fritz Haber" on it. Laureates receive a heavily decorated diploma together with a gold medal and the prize money. Here Fritz Haber's diploma is shown, which he received for the development of a method to synthesise ammonia. All medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold. Since then, they have been struck in 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold. The weight of each medal varies with the value of gold, but averages about 175 grams (0.386 lb) for each medal. The diameter is 66 millimetres (2.6 in) and the thickness varies between 5.2 millimetres (0.20 in) and 2.4 millimetres (0.094 in).[86] Because of the high value of their gold content and tendency to be on public display, Nobel medals are subject to medal theft.[87][88][89] During World War II, the medals of German scientists Max von Laue and James Franck were sent to Copenhagen for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark, Hungarian chemist (and Nobel laureate himself) George de Hevesy dissolved them in aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), to prevent confiscation by Nazi Germany and to prevent legal problems for the holders. After the war, the gold was recovered from solution, and the medals re-cast.[90] Diplomas Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the hands of the King of Sweden, or in the case of the peace prize, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Each diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureates that receive them.[84] The diploma contains a picture and text in Swedish which states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. None of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates has ever had a citation on their diplomas.[91][92] Award money The laureates are given a sum of money when they receive their prizes, in the form of a document confirming the amount awarded.[84] The amount of prize money depends upon how much money the Nobel Foundation can award each year. The purse has increased since the 1980s, when the prize money was 880,000 SEK per prize (c. 2.6 million SEK altogether, US$350,000 today). In 2009, the monetary award was 10 million SEK (US$1.4 million).[93][94] In June 2012, it was lowered to 8 million SEK.[95] If two laureates share the prize in a category, the award grant is divided equally between the recipients. If there are three, the awarding committee has the option of dividing the grant equally, or awarding one-half to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the others.[96][97][98] It is common for recipients to donate prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes.[99][100] Controversies and criticisms Main article: Nobel Prize controversies Controversial recipients When it was announced that Henry Kissinger was to be awarded the Peace Prize, two of the Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest. Among other criticisms, the Nobel Committees have been accused of having a political agenda, and of omitting more deserving candidates. They have also been accused of Eurocentrism, especially for the Literature Prize.[101][102][103] Peace Prize Among the most criticised Nobel Peace Prizes was the one awarded to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ. This led to the resignation of two Norwegian Nobel Committee members.[104] Kissinger and Thọ were awarded the prize for negotiating a ceasefire between North Vietnam and the United States in January 1973. However, when the award was announced, both sides were still engaging in hostilities.[105] Critics sympathetic to the North announced that Kissinger was not a peace-maker but the opposite, responsible for widening the war. Those hostile to the North and what they considered its deceptive practices during negotiations were deprived of a chance to criticise Lê Đức Thọ, as he declined the award.[50][106] The satirist and musician Tom Lehrer has remarked that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."[107] Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine.[50][108] Immediately after the award was announced, one of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members denounced Arafat as a terrorist and resigned.[109] Additional misgivings about Arafat were widely expressed in various newspapers.[110] Another controversial Peace Prize was that awarded to Barack Obama in 2009.[111] Nominations had closed only eleven days after Obama took office as President of the United States, but the actual evaluation occurred over the next eight months.[112] Obama himself stated that he did not feel deserving of the award, or worthy of the company in which it would place him.[113][114] Past Peace Prize laureates were divided, some saying that Obama deserved the award, and others saying he had not secured the achievements to yet merit such an accolade. Obama's award, along with the previous Peace Prizes for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, also prompted accusations of a left-wing bias.[115] Literature Prize The award of the 2004 Literature Prize to Elfriede Jelinek drew a protest from a member of the Swedish Academy, Knut Ahnlund. Ahnlund resigned, alleging that the selection of Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art". He alleged that Jelinek's works were "a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure".[116][117] The 2009 Literature Prize to Herta Müller also generated criticism. According to The Washington Post, many US literary critics and professors were ignorant of her work.[118] This made those critics feel the prizes were too Eurocentric.[119] Science prizes In 1949, the neurologist António Egas Moniz received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for his development of the prefrontal leucotomy. The previous year, Dr. Walter Freeman had developed a version of the procedure which was faster and easier to carry out. Due in part to the publicity surrounding the original procedure, Freeman's procedure was prescribed without due consideration or regard for modern medical ethics. Endorsed by such influential publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, leucotomy or "lobotomy" became so popular that about 5,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States in the three years immediately following Moniz's receipt of the Prize.[120][121] Overlooked achievements Mahatma Gandhi although nominated five times was never awarded a Nobel Peace Prize Although Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of non-violence in the 20th century, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was assassinated on 30 January 1948, he never was awarded the prize.[122][123][124] In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate".[122][125] In 1989, this omission was publicly regretted, when the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize, the chairman of the committee said that it was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".[126] Geir Lundestad, 2006 Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee, said, "The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace Prize. Whether Nobel committee can do without Gandhi is the question."[127] Other high-profile individuals with widely recognised contributions to peace have been overlooked. An article in the Foreign Policy magazine identified seven people who "never won the prize, but should have". The list: Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Václav Havel, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sari Nusseibeh, Corazon Aquino, and Liu Xiaobo.[124] Liu Xiaobo would go on to win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while imprisoned. In 1965, UN Secretary General U Thant was informed by the Norwegian Permanent Representative to the UN that he would be awarded that year's prize and asked whether or not he would accept. He consulted staff and later replied that he would. At the same time, Chairman Gunnar Jahn of the Nobel Peace prize committee, lobbied heavily against giving U Thant the prize and the prize was at the last minute awarded to UNICEF. The rest of the committee all wanted the prize to go to U Thant, for his work in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending the war in the Congo, and his ongoing work to mediate an end to the Vietnam War. The disagreement lasted three years and in 1966 and 1967 no prize was given, with Gunnar Jahn effectively vetoing an award to U Thant.[128][129] James Joyce, one of the controversial omissions of the Literature Prize The Literature Prize also has controversial omissions. Adam Kirsch has suggested that many notable writers have missed out on the award for political or extra-literary reasons. The heavy focus on European and Swedish authors has been a subject of criticism.[130][131] The Eurocentric nature of the award was acknowledged by Peter Englund, the 2009 Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, as a problem with the award and was attributed to the tendency for the academy to relate more to European authors.[132] This tendency towards European authors still leaves some European writers on a list of notable writers that have been overlooked for the Literature Prize, including Europe's Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, J. R. R. Tolkien, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, August Strindberg, Simon Vestdijk, Karel Čapek, the New World's Jorge Luis Borges, Ezra Pound, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, and Africa's Chinua Achebe.[133] Candidates can receive multiple nominations the same year. Gaston Ramon received a total of 155[134] nominations in physiology or medicine from 1930 to 1953, the last year with public nomination data for that award as of 2016. He died in 1963 without being awarded. Pierre Paul Émile Roux received 115[135] nominations in physiology or medicine, and Arnold Sommerfeld received 84[136] in physics. These are the three most nominated scientists without awards in the data published as of 2016.[137] Otto Stern received 79[138] nominations in physics 1925–1943 before being awarded in 1943.[139] The strict rule against awarding a prize to more than three people is also controversial.[140] When a prize is awarded to recognise an achievement by a team of more than three collaborators, one or more will miss out. For example, in 2002, the prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, an award that did not recognise the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt.[141][142] According to one of the nominees for the prize in physics, the three person limit deprived him and two other members of his team of the honor in 2013: the team of Carl Hagen, Gerald Guralnik, and Tom Kibble published a paper in 1964 that gave answers to how the cosmos began, but did not share the 2013 Physics Prize awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert, who had also published papers in 1964 concerning the subject. All five physicists arrived at the same conclusion, albeit from different angles. Hagen contends that an equitable solution is to either abandon the three limit restriction, or expand the time period of recognition for a given achievement to two years.[143] Similarly, the prohibition of posthumous awards fails to recognise achievements by an individual or collaborator who dies before the prize is awarded. The Economics Prize was not awarded to Fischer Black, who died in 1995, when his co-author Myron Scholes received the honor in 1997 for their landmark work on option pricing along with Robert C. Merton, another pioneer in the development of valuation of stock options. In the announcement of the award that year, the Nobel committee prominently mentioned Black's key role. Political subterfuge may also deny proper recognition. Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, who co-discovered nuclear fission along with Otto Hahn, may have been denied a share of Hahn's 1944 Nobel Chemistry Award due to having fled Germany when the Nazis came to power.[144] The Meitner and Strassmann roles in the research was not fully recognised until years later, when they joined Hahn in receiving the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award. Emphasis on discoveries over inventions Alfred Nobel left his fortune to finance annual prizes to be awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind".[145] He stated that the Nobel Prizes in Physics should be given "to the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics". Nobel did not emphasise discoveries, but they have historically been held in higher respect by the Nobel Prize Committee than inventions: 77% of the Physics Prizes have been given to discoveries, compared with only 23% to inventions. Christoph Bartneck and Matthias Rauterberg, in papers published in Nature and Technoetic Arts, have argued this emphasis on discoveries has moved the Nobel Prize away from its original intention of rewarding the greatest contribution to society.[146][147] Gender disparity See also: List of female Nobel laureates In terms of the most prestigious awards in STEM fields, only a small proportion have been awarded to women. Out of 210 laureates in Physics, 181 in Chemistry and 216 in Medicine between 1901 and 2018, there were only three female laureates in physics, five in chemistry and 12 in medicine.[148][149][150][151] Factors proposed to contribute to the discrepancy between this and the roughly equal human sex ratio include biased nominations, fewer women than men being active in the relevant fields, Nobel Prizes typically being awarded decades after the research was done (reflecting a time when gender bias in the relevant fields was greater), a greater delay in awarding Nobel Prizes for women's achievements making longevity a more important factor for women (one cannot be nominated to the Nobel Prize posthumously), and a tendency to omit women from jointly awarded Nobel Prizes.[152][153][154][155][156][157] Despite these factors, Marie Curie is to date the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (Physics in 1903, Chemistry in 1911); she is one of only three people who have received two Nobel Prizes in sciences (see Multiple laureates below). Facts Youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize: Malala Yousafzai; at the age of 17, received Nobel Peace Prize (2014). Oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize: John B. Goodenough; at the age of 97, received Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2019). Only person to receive more than one unshared Nobel Prizes: Linus Pauling; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954) and Nobel Peace Prize (1962) Laureates who have received Multiple Nobel Prizes: Marie Curie; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) and Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911). Linus Pauling; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954) and Nobel Peace Prize (1962). John Bardeen; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Physics (1956, 1972). Frederick Sanger; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1958, 1980). International Committee of the Red Cross; received the prize three times. Nobel Peace Prize (1917, 1944, 1963). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; received the prize twice. Nobel Peace Prize (1954, 1981). Posthumous Nobel Prizes laureates: Erik Axel Karlfeldt; received Nobel Prize in Literature (1931). Dag Hammarskjöld; received Nobel Peace Prize (1961). Ralph M. Steinman; received Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2011). Married couples to receive Nobel Prizes:[158] Marie Curie, Pierre Curie (along with Henri Becquerel). Received Nobel Prize in Physics (1903). Irène Joliot-Curie, Frédéric Joliot. Received Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1935). Gerty Cori, Carl Cori. Received Nobel Prize in Medicine (1947). May-Britt Moser, Edvard I. Moser. Received Nobel Prize in Medicine (2014) Alva Myrdal; received Nobel Peace Prize (1982), Gunnar Myrdal; received Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences (1974). Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee (along with Michael Kremer). Received Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences (2019).[159] Specially distinguished laureates Multiple laureates A black and white portrait of a woman in profile. Marie Curie, one of four people who have received the Nobel Prize twice (Physics and Chemistry) Four people have received two Nobel Prizes. Marie Curie received the Physics Prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for the isolation of pure radium,[160] making her the only person to be awarded a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. Linus Pauling was awarded the 1954 Chemistry Prize for his research into the chemical bond and its application to the structure of complex substances. Pauling was also awarded the Peace Prize in 1962 for his activism against nuclear weapons, making him the only laureate of two unshared prizes. John Bardeen received the Physics Prize twice: in 1956 for the invention of the transistor and in 1972 for the theory of superconductivity.[161] Frederick Sanger received the prize twice in Chemistry: in 1958 for determining the structure of the insulin molecule and in 1980 for inventing a method of determining base sequences in DNA.[162][163] Two organizations have received the Peace Prize multiple times. The International Committee of the Red Cross received it three times: in 1917 and 1944 for its work during the world wars; and in 1963 during the year of its centenary.[164][165][166] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Peace Prize twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.[167] Family laureates The Curie family has received the most prizes, with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates. Marie Curie received the prizes in Physics (in 1903) and Chemistry (in 1911). Her husband, Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 Physics prize with her.[168] Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In addition, the husband of Marie Curie's second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on that organisation's behalf.[169] Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates. The husband-and-wife team of Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori shared the 1947 Prize in Physiology or Medicine[170] as did the husband-and-wife team of May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser in 2014 (along with John O'Keefe).[171] J. J. Thomson was awarded the Physics Prize in 1906 for showing that electrons are particles. His son, George Paget Thomson, received the same prize in 1937 for showing that they also have the properties of waves.[172] William Henry Bragg and his son, William Lawrence Bragg, shared the Physics Prize in 1915 for inventing the X-ray crystallography.[173] Niels Bohr was awarded the Physics prize in 1922, as was his son, Aage Bohr, in 1975.[169][174] Manne Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1924, was the father of Kai Siegbahn, who received the Physics Prize in 1981.[169][175] Hans von Euler-Chelpin, who received the Chemistry Prize in 1929, was the father of Ulf von Euler, who was awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1970.[169] C. V. Raman was awarded the Physics Prize in 1930 and was the uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was awarded the same prize in 1983.[176][177] Arthur Kornberg received the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1959; Kornberg's son, Roger later received the Chemistry Prize in 2006.[178] Jan Tinbergen, who was awarded the first Economics Prize in 1969, was the brother of Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the 1973 Physiology or Medicine Prize.[169] Alva Myrdal, Peace Prize laureate in 1982, was the wife of Gunnar Myrdal who was awarded the Economics Prize in 1974.[169] Economics laureates Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow were brothers-in-law. Frits Zernike, who was awarded the 1953 Physics Prize, is the great-uncle of 1999 Physics laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[179] In 2019, married couple Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were awarded the Economics Prize.[180] Refusals and constraints A black and white portrait of a man in a suit and tie. Half of his face is in a shadow. Richard Kuhn, who was forced to decline his Nobel Prize in Chemistry Two laureates have voluntarily declined the Nobel Prize. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Literature Prize but refused, stating, "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form."[181] Lê Đức Thọ, chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize for his role in the Paris Peace Accords, declined, stating that there was no actual peace in Vietnam.[182] George Bernard Shaw attempted to decline the prize money while accepting the 1925 Literature Prize; eventually it was agreed to use it to found the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.[183] During the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler hindered Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk from accepting their prizes. All of them were awarded their diplomas and gold medals after World War II. In 1958, Boris Pasternak declined his prize for literature due to fear of what the Soviet Union government might do if he travelled to Stockholm to accept his prize. In return, the Swedish Academy refused his refusal, saying "this refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award."[182] The Academy announced with regret that the presentation of the Literature Prize could not take place that year, holding it back until 1989 when Pasternak's son accepted the prize on his behalf.[184][185] Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but her children accepted the prize because she had been placed under house arrest in Burma; Suu Kyi delivered her speech two decades later, in 2012.[186] Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while he and his wife were under house arrest in China as political prisoners, and he was unable to accept the prize in his lifetime. Cultural impact The International Nobel Economic Congress 2008, at the Alfred Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine Being a symbol of scientific or literary achievement that is recognisable worldwide, the Nobel Prize is often depicted in fiction. This includes films like The Prize (1963), Nobel Son (2007), and The Wife (2017) about fictional Nobel laureates, as well as fictionalised accounts of stories surrounding real prizes such as Nobel Chor, a 2012 film based on the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's prize.[187][188] The memorial symbol "Planet of Alfred Nobel" was opened in Alfred Nobel University of Economics and Law in Dnipro, Ukraine in 2008. On the globe, there are 802 Nobel laureates' reliefs made of a composite alloy obtained when disposing of military strategic missiles.[189] Despite the symbolism of intellectual achievement, some recipients have embraced unsupported and pseudoscientific concepts, including various health benefits of vitamin C and other dietary supplements, homeopathy, HIV/AIDS denialism, and various claims about race and intelligence.[190] This is sometimes referred to as Nobel disease. The path to protein structure How did Perutz come to develop a method to reveal the 3-dimensional structures of proteins? It was through a series of accidents and then single-minded persistence.’ His father was an Austrian textile manufacturer who had spent his apprenticeship in England (Perutz, 1980). As an ardent Anglophile, the father was willing to underwrite the son’s graduate education in Cambridge, England. Max Perutz, as an undergraduate at the University of Vienna in 1935, had learned of the work in Cambridge by Frederick Gowland Hopkins on vitamins. When he heard that his physical chemistry professor from Vienna, Herman Mark, was going to attend ameeting in Cambridge, Perutz asked Mark to find a place for him in Hopkins’s laboratory. However, while in Cambridge, Professor Mark visited J.D. Bernal, who showed him the first good X-ray diffraction pictures of a protein, pep- ~ ~~~_______________.___.~ Reprint requests to: David Eisenberg, UCLA-DOE Laboratory of Structural Biology and Molecular Medicine, Molecular Biology Institute, and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Galifornia at LOS Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90024-1570; e-mail: ’ Fortunately, Max Perutz has written about his development as a scientist and of his process of discovery. In this editorial, I have drawn from these sources, and 1 have freely quoted and paraphrased from them. The most extensive source is Perutz’s 1989 book, Is Science Neeessary?, which is recommended with enthusiasm to all protein scientists. sin, which Bernal and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin had obtained the year before. Professor Mark claimed he was so excited by these photos that he forgot about Perutz’s request to work with Hopkins and instead arranged for him to work with Bernal. When Perutz heard about this, he protested that he knew no crystallography. Professor Mark replied: “Never mind, my boy, you will learn it.” And so Perutz joined Bernal’s lab in September 1936. Perutz (1980) recalls Bernal as “the most brilliant talker I have ever encountered . . . [and] was soon inspired by [Bernal’s] visionary faith in the power of X-ray diffraction to solve the structures of molecules as large and complex as enzymes or viruses at a time when the structure of ordinary sugar was still unsolved” (Perutz, 1985a). But Ph.D. dissertations are not based on inspiration alone. By the following summer, Perutz still had no thesis topic and was concerned about his future (Perutz, 1980). When he returned to Austria for summer vacation, he remembered that one of his cousins in Prague had married a biochemist, Felix Haurowitz, and Perutz called on him for advice. Haurowitz suggested as a thesis the structure of hemoglobin. Apparently, like Perutz, he did not realize that it was then impossible to determine protein structures: there was as yet no practical way to measure accurately so many intensities of diffraction; there was no way to determine the unknown phases of the diffracted beams; and there were no computers, or even calculators, to compute electron density maps. Haurowitz showed that as oxygen enters hexagonal plates of horse deoxyhemoglobin, they disorder and monoclinic needles of oxyhemoglobin form in their place (Haurowitz, 1938). This must mean that oxygen changes hemoglobin’s shape, and Perutz wanted to see how. He got down to work, not knowing that it would take him 22 years, even to make a start. At first Perutz tried to determine the phases by scanning the molecular transform, using the diffraction pattern of hemoglobin crystals in different stages of swelling and shrinkage. He recalls (Perutz, 1985a): “. . . with immense labor I mapped out the nodes and antinodes of the molecular transform of hemoglobin, . . . but managed to determine the signs of only a few loworder hol reflections. I also spent many years collecting and visually measuring the intensities of the reflections needed for a three-dimensional Patterson at 2.8 A resolution, hoping that some simplifying regular features of the molecular structure 1625 1626 would make that Patterson interpretable. I did in fact fool myself into believing that I had solved the structure of hemoglobin, only to find my solution demolished by my newly arrived research student Francis Crick. . . . I was desperate that 16 years’ toil had led me nowhere. . . .” But just then, in 1953, renewed hope arrived in the form of a reprint, from Austin Riggs at Harvard, showing that it was possible to bind mercury to hemoglobin. When Perutz examined X-ray pictures of hemoglobin with bound mercury, he saw that there were marked changes in the relative intensities of the diffraction spots. He said that this, “. . . was the most exciting moment in all my research career, because I realized at that moment that now in principle, the protein problem was solved” (Judson, 1979). In September 1953, he reported this finding at the Pasadena Conference on the Structure of Proteins, organized by Linus Pauling. But the conferees took little notice of his talk. The attention instead went to Linus Pauling and his a-helix and to Watson and Crick for their new DNA structure. This structure had been worked out in Perutz’s lab, where Watson had come as a postdoc to apply X-ray diffraction to the study of DNA, and where Crick was a graduate student. Even though the method of adding heavy atoms to proteins was the solution in principle to the problem of protein structure, Perutz found in practice that, “There were all kinds of dreadful complications. In retrospect, 6 years doesn’t seem such a terribly long time, but when you’re actually living six years, and trying, not very successfully, to apply this method which you knew could solve the structure of proteins, it seemed an eternity” (Judson, 1979). D. Eisen berg Success at last Nevertheless, from 1953 onward, there was steady progress: a projection map of hemoglobin in 1954 (Bragg & Perutz, 1954); a second heavy-atom derivative finally in 1958; a method by Michael Rossmann (1960) (The Protein Society’s 1994 Stein and Moore Awardee) for determining the relative positions in the unit cell of the 2 heavy atoms; and at last, in 1960, a paper by Perutz, Rossmann and others describing the tertiary and quaternary structure of hemoglobin at 5.5 A resolution (Perutz et al., 1960). Meanwhile, Perutz’s colleague and former student, John Kendrew, had pressed ahead to apply isomorphous replacement to the smaller myoglobin molecule. With myoglobin, but not at first with hemoglobin, heavy atoms could be bound between molecules in the crystal lattice, and, by 1960, it was possible to build an atomic model of the structure at 2 A resolution (Kendrew et al., 1960). “Today this looks like child’s play,” recalled Perutz (1985a) about the 6-A-resolution myoglobin structure of 1959, “but remember that the phase angles had to be determined manually by superposition of circles for each reflection. . . . Nearly all the methods used had to be developed from scratch as the work progressed.” The photograph of the 1962 Nobel Prize ceremony (Fig. I) shows a beaming Perutz, who, along with Kendrew, received the award in chemistry. Fortunately, neither awards nor scientific fame quenched Perutz’s curiosity about hemoglobin. He and his coworkers extended the resolution of the hemoglobin structure to 2.8 A (Perutz et al., 1968) and then to 1.74 A (Fermi et al., 1984). Perutz (1970) presented a detailed atomic model for the Fig. 1. In 1962, Perutz (second from left) and Kendrew (on right) received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. At the same ceremony, \Watson (second from risht) and Crick (third from left) received the award in physiology and medicine, sharing it with Maurice Wilkins from London (on left). The fourth principal in the DNA structure, Rosalind Franklin, had died at age 37, 4 years before. At the center is John Steinbeck, the literature awardee. (Photograph made available by UPI/Bettmann.) Max Perutz and protein science 1627 stereochemical basis of cooperative binding of oxygen, and he and coworkers explained the effects on hemoglobin physiology pH and of dozens of mutants and species differences. One colleague recently heard Perutz speak on an unexpected mutation in high-altitude globins. It conflicted with his original interpretation. In pursuing the problem, Perutz explained, “I just had to know.” The dual Nobel prizes for the structures of both proteins and DNA constituted tangible recognition for Max Perutz’s second great achievement: the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. This lab, with Perutz as Director from 1947 to 1979, has members who have made many discoveries, in addition tothe 3-dimensional structures of proteins and DNA. There is the sequencing of proteins, the sequencing of DNA, the sliding filament model of muscle, monoclonal antibodies, 3-dimensional reconstruction from micrographs, electron crystallography of membrane proteins, and the pioneering work on molecular replacement. How could all of this, and much more, have happened under one roof? To have a chance of answering this question, we need to know more about Max Perutz, the person. We are helped in this by Perutz’s graphic World War I1 memoirs, which were published in the New Yorker (Perutz, 1985b), and reprinted in his book, Is Science Necessary? (Perutz, 1989). In the following section, I paraphrase closely from these memoirs. World War I1 In May 1940, just several weeks after he received his Ph.D., Perutz was arrested in Cambridge as an enemy alien, interned, and then deported to Canada, locked in the airless hold of a troop ship with 1,200 other deportees. A sister ship, crammed with interned Austrian and Germany refugees to England, was torpedoed by a German U boat, drowning 615. Perutz was embittered, having first been rejected as a Jew by his native Austria, which he loved, and now finding himself rejected as a German by his adopted country. He was frustrated at having to idle away time instead of helping in the war against Hitler. To keep spirits up, Perutz organized a university in the prison camp, with courses on vector analysis, theoretical physics, and of course, crystal structure analysis. At the start of 1941, Perutz’s friends at home were successful in getting him released to return to England and hemoglobin. But soon he was approached by a shadowy figure named Pyke, to help in a top-secret war project. Later Perutz learned that Pyke’s career had been a string of failures, but “despite his failures Pyke remained unshaken in his faith that he knew how to perform any job better than those whose profession that job happened to be, and as soon as the. . . war broke out he became intent on telling the soldiers how to win it.” At first Perutz was told only that he shouldiscover how to make ice strong. This he did, with the help of a report from his former professor from Vienna, Herman Mark, by freezing it in the presence of wood pulp, in analogy to the way concrete is reinforced by steel bands. Perutz called this reinforced ice “pykrete,” in honor of Pyke, the head of the project. Only gradually did Perutz learn what Pyke had in mind for strong ice: it was to build immense aircraft carriers out of ice, called bergships. The grandiose design of bergships kept growing until it called for a self-propelled, self-refrigerating ice ship, 2,000 feet long by 200 feet wide, with a flight deck 50 feet above the water (Protein Society members know enough about the properties of ice to understand what this means for the volume of ice below the water), and with a cruising range of 7,000 miles. Its displacement of 2.2 million tons was 26 times that of the Queen Elizabeth, then the biggest ship afloat. The rudder was to be the height of a 15-story building. Turbo-electric steam generators were to supply 33,000 horsepower to drive the bergship. Pyke’s mind raced ahead to work out new ways bergships would win the war. Pyke’s idea was that bergships would force their way into enemy harbors, where defending troops would be frozen solid by sprays of supercooled water, supplied from enormous tanks on board. Pyke did not concern himself with details such as how the supercooled water in the tanks would be prevented from crystallizing. Meanwhile, Perutz was assigned to find some location on earth for freezing 2 million tons of pykrete during the winter of 1943. However, pykrete and bergships fell from favor. A major reason was Pyke’s megalomania, but another was that a demonstration of pykrete to the Chiefs of Staff literally backfired. Perutz prepared large blocks of ice and pykrete, but as an Austrian, he was not invited to make the demonstration himself. The officer who carried out the demonstration fired a revolver into the block of ice, which shattered. When he fired into the block of pykrete, the bullet rebounded and hit the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the shoulder. Pyke was disappointed about the demise of the bergships but busied himself with new plans. One was to construct a gigantic pneumatic tube to run under the Himalayas, to propel soldiers and tanks from Burma to China with compressed air. At this point, Perutz returned to Cambridge, “sad at first that [his] eagerness to help in the war against Hitler had not found a more effective outlet, but later relieved to have worked on a project that never killed anyone-not even the chief of the Imperial General staff” (Perutz, 198513). Perutz’s brilliant narration of his war experiences is both moving and hilarious and carries serious messages. The central message seems to be that war provides an excuse to suspend our normal critical evaluations. The Pykes of this world take the place of study sections, and then science and technology, funded uncritically, go wild, as with plans for bergships. Society also suffers from uncritical social judgments, such as the British decision to deport thousands of innocent and loyal refugees. Of course, we in the United States fell prey to similar bad judgment: in 1942, we arrested and interned 120,313 Japanese-Americans, some 80,000 of whom were U.S. citizens by birth. Max Perutz as scientist and leader To complete this editorial, I attempt to summarize the qualities that allowed Max Perutz to build a great lab, and to make great discoveries. Perutz hints at his own view in a book review he wrote of a biography of Lord Rutherford (Perutz, 1984, 1989, page 164). Perutz says that, during his first year in Cambridge, he became imbued with Rutherford’s scientific values. These came from the atmosphere ofthe lab and from Rutherford’s papers, which he still looks to as models of the way science should be done. Rutherford’s values are stated as “loyalty to your laboratory, extreme devotion to hard experimental work, and strong aversion to speculation beyond what is justified by the experimental results.” But having said that, Perutz immediately adds 3 sentences that reveal that he has a wider view: He says, 1628 D. Eisenberg “When Crick and Watson lounged around, arguing about problems for which there existed as yet no firm experimental data instead of getting down to the bench and doing experiments, I thought they were wasting their time. However, like Leonardo, they sometimes achieved most when they seemed to be working least, and their apparent idleness led them to solve the greatest of all biological problems, the structure of DNA. There is more than one way of doing good science.” In 1985, I was privileged to spend an 8-month sabbatical leave in the Cambridge laboratory that Perutz had built. On my first morning, Perutz’s secretary sought me out with a message from him. This in itself was surprising because I had made my sabbatical arrangements with his successor as Director, and I had no reason to think that Perutz would take it upon himself to greet me. But the message held another surprise: he apologized for not being at the lab to welcome me because he had been up most of the night, trying to get his experiment going. He was then in his 70th year. And his love of experiments continues: a recent issue of PNAS contains his article on polar zippers (Perutz et al., 1994). In the Cambridge lab, I failed to find the formality that I had expected from my own graduate student days at Oxford. Everyone, from students and technicians to Max, was on a first-name basis. Nearly the whole lab met in the top floor canteen for morning coffee, lunch, and then afternoon tea. In my first few days, I resented these intrusions into the work day. But I soon caught on that there would always be someone at tea or coffee who could help me conquer my current problem. I never went more than 3 hours wrong in my research. I was able to progress rapidly and, toward the end of my Cambridge stay, I wrote a paper on my findings. Perutz asked to see the manuscript and returned it with an encouraging note, including suggestions about science and the use of the English language. To sum up, the factors that I see in Perutz’s colossal achievements are a love of experiments, intense intellectual focus, leadership by example, a deep interest in both ideas and people, and an openness to varied research styles. But perhaps the most important factor is his driving need to know. Perutz simply needed to know how hemoglobin changes shape when it binds oxygen. What other than this could have kept him going, through 16 years with no positive results, on to the structure of proteins?  The University of Cambridge is a collegiate research university in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Founded in 1209[9] and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third-oldest surviving university.[10] The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople.[11] The two English ancient universities share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. Cambridge is ranked among the most prestigious universities in the world and currently sits as the world's second best university, and the best in Europe, according the QS World University Rankings.[12] Cambridge has won more Nobel Prizes than any other institution with 121 Nobel laureates.[13] The university's notable alumni and faculty also include 11 Fields Medalists, 7 Turing Award winners, 47 heads of state and 14 British prime ministers. As of 2016, University alumni had won 194 Olympic medals.[14] Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 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, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. 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 small-group supervisions in the colleges in groups of typically 1–4 students. This intensive method of teaching is widely considered the 'jewel in the crown' of an Oxbridge undergraduate education.[15][16][17][18][19] In addition, lectures, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further supervisions are provided by the central university faculties and departments, while postgraduate teaching is also predominantly provided centrally. Degrees are conferred by the university, not the colleges. By both endowment size and material consolidated assets, Cambridge is the wealthiest university in Europe.[20][21] In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the central university, excluding colleges, had a total income of £2.192 billion, of which £592.4 million was from research grants and contracts.[4] At the end of the same financial year, 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.[22] Cambridge University Press & Assessment combines the oldest university press in the world with one of the world's leading examining bodies, providing assessment to over eight million learners globally every year and reaching some fifty million learners, teachers and researchers monthly.[23] The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a botanic garden. Cambridge's libraries, of which there are over 100, hold a total of around 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library. The university is home to, but independent of, the Cambridge Union – the world's oldest debating society. The university is closely linked to the development of the high-tech business cluster known as 'Silicon Fen', the largest technology cluster in Europe.[24] It is the central member of Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre based around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Contents 1 History 1.1 Foundation of the colleges 1.2 Mathematics and mathematical physics 1.3 Modern period 1.3.1 Parliamentary representation 1.4 Women's education 1.5 Myths, legends and traditions 2 Locations and buildings 2.1 Buildings 2.2 Sites 2.3 'Town and gown' 3 Organisation and administration 3.1 Colleges 3.2 Schools, faculties and departments 3.3 Central administration 3.3.1 Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor 3.3.2 Senate and the Regent House 3.3.3 Council and the General Board 3.4 Finances 3.4.1 Benefactions and fundraising 3.4.2 Bonds 3.5 Affiliations and memberships 4 Academic profile 4.1 Admissions 4.1.1 Procedure 4.1.2 Access 4.2 Teaching 4.3 Research 4.4 Graduation 4.5 Libraries and museums 4.6 Publishing and assessments 4.7 Reputation and rankings 5 Student life 5.1 Student Unions 5.2 Sexual harassment 5.3 Sport 5.4 Societies 5.5 Newspapers and radio 5.6 JCR and MCR 5.7 Formal Halls and May Balls 6 Notable alumni and academics 6.1 Mathematics and sciences 6.2 Humanities, music and art 6.3 Literature 6.4 Sports 6.5 Education 6.6 Politics 6.7 Technology 7 In literature and popular culture 8 Gallery 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 11.1 Citations 11.2 Sources 12 Bibliography 13 External links History See also: Timeline of Cambridge By the late 12th century, the Cambridge area already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. However, it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have led to the establishment of the university: three Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, who would normally take precedence (and pardon the scholars) in such a case, but were at that time in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from the townsfolk, scholars from the University of Oxford started to move away to cities such as Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. Subsequently, enough scholars remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of a new university when it had become safe enough for academia to resume at Oxford.[9][25][26] In order to claim precedence, it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members (ius non-trahi extra) and an exemption from some taxes; Oxford was not granted similar rights until 1248.[27] A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach "everywhere in Christendom".[28] After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV in 1290,[29] and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318,[30] it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.[29] Foundation of the colleges The colleges at 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 traces, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.[31] Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, was founded in 1284 Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries, but colleges continued to be established until modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and that of Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college (it was previously an "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 were often associated with chapels or abbeys. The colleges' focus changed in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law[32] 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 was at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even commoners saw the ways of the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church, and felt that it was used by the Crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement. In Cambridge, the movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College.[33] They produced many "non-conformist" graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or preaching, some 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. Emmanuel College Chapel Mathematics and mathematical physics Examination in mathematics was once compulsory for all undergraduates studying for 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 mid-19th century, the university maintained an especially strong emphasis on applied mathematics, particularly mathematical physics. The exam is known as a Tripos.[34] Students awarded first-class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos are termed wranglers, and the top student among them is the Senior Wrangler. The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos is competitive and has helped produce some of the most famous names in British science, including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin and Lord Rayleigh.[35] However, some famous students, such as G. H. 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 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 above all to G. H. Hardy, his collaborator J. E. Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan. In geometry, W. V. D. Hodge brought Cambridge onto the international mainstream in the 1930s. Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its strength in mathematics. Cambridge alumni have won six Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics, while individuals representing Cambridge have won four Fields Medals.[36] Modern period Selwyn College was founded in 1882 After the Cambridge University Act 1856 formalised the organisational structure of the university, the study of many new subjects was introduced, such as theology, history and modern languages.[37] 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.[38] In 1847, Prince Albert was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge after a close contest with the Earl of Powis. Albert used his position as Chancellor to campaign successfully for reformed and more modern university curricula, expanding the subjects taught beyond the traditional mathematics and classics to include modern history and the natural sciences. Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of its land to build the Downing Site, with new scientific laboratories for anatomy, genetics and Earth sciences.[39] During the same period, the New Museums Site was erected, including the Cavendish Laboratory, which has since moved to the West Cambridge Site, and other departments for chemistry and medicine.[40] 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.[41] In the First World War, 13,878 members of the university served and 2,470 were killed. Teaching, and the fees it earned, came almost to a stop and severe financial difficulties followed. As a consequence the university first received systematic state support in 1919, and a Royal Commission appointed in 1920 recommended that the university (but not the colleges) should receive an annual grant.[42] Following the Second World War, the university saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available places; this was partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.[43] Parliamentary representation Main article: University of Cambridge (UK Parliament constituency) The university was one of only two universities to hold parliamentary seats in the Parliament of England and was later one of 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. Its electorate consisted of the graduates of the university. Before 1918 the franchise was restricted to male graduates with a doctorate or MA degree. Women's education Newnham College is one of two extant women's colleges For its first several centuries only male students were enrolled into the university. 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), Murray Edwards College (founded by Rosemary Murray as New Hall) 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.[44] Women were allowed to study courses, sit examinations, and have their results recorded from 1881; for a brief period after the turn of the twentieth century, this allowed the "steamboat ladies" to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin.[45] From 1921 women were awarded diplomas which "conferred the Title of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts". As they were not "admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts" they were excluded from the governing 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. Darwin College, the first wholly graduate college of the university, matriculated both men and women students from its inception in 1964 – and elected a mixed fellowship. Of the undergraduate colleges, starting with Churchill, Clare and King's Colleges, the former men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. Of the female-only colleges, Girton began to admit male students from 1979, and Lucy Cavendish from 2021, but the other female-only colleges did not do likewise. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining United Kingdom university with female-only colleges (Newnham and Murray Edwards).[46][47] In the academic year 2019–2020, the university's student sex ratio, including post-graduates, was male 53%: female 47%.[48] Myths, legends and traditions The Mathematical Bridge over the River Cam (at Queens' College) Main article: University of Cambridge legends See also: Category:Terminology of the University of Cambridge As an institution with such a long history, the university has developed a large number of myths and legends. The vast majority of these are untrue, 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 lowest passing honours grade in the final examinations of the Mathematical Tripos. The last of these spoons was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of the Lady Margaret Boat Club of St John's College. It was over one metre in length and had an oar blade for a handle. It can now be seen outside the Senior Combination Room of St John's. Since 1908, examination results have been published alphabetically within class rather than in strict order of merit. This made it harder to ascertain who was "entitled" to the spoon (unless there was only one person in the third class), and so the practice was abandoned. Each Christmas Eve, BBC radio and television broadcasts The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols sung by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The radio broadcast has been a national Christmas tradition since it was first transmitted in 1928 (though the festival has existed since 1918). The radio broadcast is carried worldwide by the BBC World Service and is also syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in the US. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954.[49][50] Front Court of King's College Locations and buildings Buildings The university occupies a central location within the city of Cambridge, with the students taking up a significant proportion (nearly 20%) of the town's population and heavily affecting the age structure.[51] Most of the older colleges are situated nearby the city centre and river Cam, along which it is traditional to punt to appreciate the buildings and surroundings.[52] Examples of notable buildings include King's College Chapel,[53] the history faculty building[54] designed by James Stirling; and the Cripps Building at St John's College.[55] The brickwork of several of the colleges is also notable: Queens' College contains "some of the earliest patterned brickwork in the country"[56] and the brick walls of St John's College provide examples of English bond, Flemish bond and Running bond.[57] The entrance to the original Cavendish Laboratory on the New Museums Site The Faculty of Education The Faculty of Law on the Sidgwick Site Sites The university is divided into several sites where the different departments are placed. The main ones are:[58] Addenbrooke's Downing Site Madingley/Girton New Museums Site Old Addenbroke's Old Schools Silver Street/Mill Lane Sidgwick Site West Cambridge North West Cambridge Development The university's School of Clinical Medicine is based in Addenbrooke's Hospital where students in medicine undergo their three-year clinical placement period after obtaining their BA degree,[59] while the West Cambridge site is undergoing a major expansion and will host a new sports development.[60] In addition, the Judge Business School, situated on Trumpington Street, provides management education courses since 1990 and is consistently ranked within the top 20 business schools globally by the Financial Times.[61] Given that the sites are in relative close proximity to each other and the area around Cambridge is reasonably flat, one of the favourite modes of transport for students is the bicycle: a fifth of the journeys in the city are made by bike, a figure enhanced by the fact that students are not permitted to hold car park permits, except under special circumstances.[62] 'Town and gown' Main article: Town and gown The relationship between the university and the city has not always been positive. The phrase town and gown is employed to differentiate inhabitants of Cambridge from students at the university, who historically wore academical dress. There are many stories of ferocious rivalry between the two categories. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, strong clashes brought about attacks and looting of university properties while locals contested the privileges granted by the government to the academic staff, the university's ledgers being burned in Market Square to the rallying cry "Away with the learning of clerks, away with it!".[63] Following these events, the Chancellor was given special powers allowing him to prosecute the criminals and re-establish order in the city. Attempts to reconcile the two groups followed over time, and in the 16th century agreements were signed to improve the quality of streets and student accommodation around the city. However, this was followed by new confrontations when the plague hit Cambridge in 1630 and colleges refused to help those affected by the disease by locking their sites.[64] Such conflicts have disappeared. The university provides employment and an increased wealth in the area.[65] The enormous growth in the number of high-tech, biotech, providers of services and related firms situated near Cambridge has been termed the Cambridge Phenomenon: the addition of 1,500 new, registered companies and as many as 40,000 jobs between 1960 and 2010 has been directly related to the presence of the university as a source of employment for Cambridge residents.[66] Organisation and administration See also: List of Institutions of the University of Cambridge View over Trinity College, Gonville and Caius, Trinity Hall and Clare College towards King's College Chapel, seen from St John's College chapel whereas on the left, just in front of King's College chapel, is the university Senate House Cambridge is a collegiate university, meaning that it is made up of self-governing and independent colleges, each with its own property and income. Most colleges bring together academics and students from a broad range of disciplines, and within each faculty, school or department within the university, academics from many different colleges are present. The faculties are responsible for ensuring that lectures are given, arranging seminars, performing research and determining the syllabi for teaching, overseen by the General Board. Together with the central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor, they make up the entire Cambridge University. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the university (the Cambridge University Library), by the Faculties (Faculty libraries such as the Squire Law Library), and by the individual colleges (all of which maintain a multi-discipline library, generally aimed mainly at their undergraduates). Legally, the university is an exempt charity and a common law corporation with the corporate title "The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge".[67] Colleges Main article: Colleges of the University of Cambridge The President's Lodge at Queens' College Margaret Wileman Building, Hughes Hall The Bridge of Sighs at St John's College The colleges are self-governing institutions with their own endowments and property, founded as integral parts of the university. All students and most academics are attached to a college. Their importance lies in the housing, welfare, social functions, and undergraduate teaching they provide. All faculties, departments, research centres, and laboratories belong to the university, which arranges lectures and awards degrees, but undergraduates receive their supervisions—small-group teaching sessions, often with just one student—within the colleges (though in many cases students go to other colleges for supervision if the teaching fellows at their college do not specialise in the areas concerned). Each college appoints its own teaching staff and fellows, who are also members of a university department. The colleges also decide which undergraduates to admit to the university, in accordance with university regulations. Cambridge has 31 colleges, of which two, Murray Edwards and Newnham, admit women only. The other colleges are mixed, though most were originally all-male. Darwin was the first college to admit both men and women, while Churchill, Clare, and King's were the first previously all-male colleges to admit female undergraduates, in 1972. Magdalene became the last all-male college to accept women, in 1988.[68] Clare Hall and Darwin admit only postgraduates, and Hughes Hall, St Edmund's and Wolfson admit only mature (i.e. 21 years or older on date of matriculation) students, encompassing both undergraduate and graduate students. Lucy Cavendish, which was previously a women-only mature college, announced that they would admit men and women from the age of 18 from 2021 onwards.[69] All other colleges admit both undergraduate and postgraduate students with no age restrictions. Colleges are not required to admit students in all subjects, with some colleges choosing not to offer subjects such as architecture, history of art or theology, but most offer close to the complete range. Some colleges maintain a bias towards certain subjects, for example with Churchill leaning towards the sciences and engineering,[70] while others such as St Catharine's aim for a balanced intake.[71] Others maintain much more informal reputations, such as for the students of King's to hold left-wing political views,[72] or Robinson's and Churchill's attempts to minimise their environmental impact.[73] Costs to students (accommodation and food prices) vary considerably from college to college.[74][75] Similarly, college expenditure on student education also varies widely between individual colleges.[76] There are also several theological colleges in Cambridge, separate from Cambridge University, including Westcott House, Westminster College and Ridley Hall Theological College, that are, to a lesser degree, affiliated to the university and are members of the Cambridge Theological Federation.[77] The 31 colleges are:[78] Christ's College heraldic shield Christ's Churchill College heraldic shield Churchill Clare College heraldic shield Clare Clare Hall heraldic shield Clare Hall Corpus Christi heraldic shield Corpus Christi Darwin College heraldic shield Darwin Downing College heraldic shield Downing Emmanuel College heraldic shield Emmanuel Fitzwilliam College heraldic shield Fitzwilliam Arms of Girton College, Cambridge.svg Girton Gonville and Caius College heraldic shield Gonville & Caius Homerton College Shield for print.png Homerton Hughes Hall heraldic shield Hughes Hall Jesus College heraldic shield Jesus King's College heraldic shield King's Lucy Cavendish College heraldic shield Lucy Cavendish Magdalene College heraldic shield Magdalene MurrayEdwardsCollegeCrest.svg Murray Edwards Newnham College heraldic shield Newnham Pembroke College heraldic shield Pembroke Peterhouse coat of arms Peterhouse Queens' College heraldic shield Queens' Robinson College heraldic shield Robinson Selwyn College heraldic shield Selwyn Sidney Sussex College heraldic shield Sidney Sussex St Catharine's College heraldic shield St Catharine's StEdmund'sCrest.png St Edmund's St John's College heraldic shield St John's Trinity College coat of arms Trinity Trinity Hall heraldic shield Trinity Hall Wolfson College Crest Wolfson Schools, faculties and departments Main article: List of institutions of the University of Cambridge § Schools, Faculties, and Departments Institute of Continuing Education, Madingley Hall. In addition to the 31 colleges, the university is made up of over 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates and other institutions.[79] Members of these are usually also members of one of the colleges and responsibility for running the entire academic programme of the university is divided among them. The university also has a department dedicated to providing continuing education, the Institute of Continuing Education, which is primarily based in Madingley Hall, a 16th-century manor house in Cambridgeshire. Its award-bearing programmes range from Undergraduate Certificates through to part-time master's degrees.[80] The Old Schools (left) are the administrative centre of the university A "School" in the University of Cambridge is a broad administrative grouping of related faculties and other units. Each has an elected supervisory body—the "Council" of the school—comprising representatives of the constituent bodies. There are six schools:[81] Arts and Humanities Biological Sciences Clinical Medicine Humanities and Social Sciences Physical Sciences Technology Teaching and research in Cambridge is organised by faculties. The faculties have different organisational sub-structures which partly reflect their history and partly their operational needs, which may include a number of departments and other institutions. In addition, a small number of bodies called 'Syndicates' have responsibilities for teaching and research, e.g. Cambridge Assessment, the University Press, and the University Library. Central administration Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor Officers of the Regent House, including Vice-Chancellor Borysiewicz, after a graduation ceremony See also: List of Vice-Chancellors of the University of Cambridge and List of Chancellors of the University of Cambridge The office of Chancellor of the university, for which there are no term limits, is mainly ceremonial and is held by David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, following the retirement of the Duke of Edinburgh on his 90th birthday in June 2011. Lord Sainsbury was nominated by the official Nomination Board to succeed him,[82] and Abdul Arain, owner of a local grocery store, Brian Blessed and Michael Mansfield were also nominated.[83][84][85] The election took place on 14 and 15 October 2011.[85] David Sainsbury won the election taking 2,893 of the 5,888 votes cast, winning on the first count. Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University The current Vice-Chancellor is Stephen Toope.[86] While the Chancellor's office is ceremonial, the Vice-Chancellor is the de facto principal administrative officer of the university. The university's internal governance is carried out almost entirely by its own members,[87] with very little external representation on its governing body, the Regent House (though there is external representation on the Audit Committee, and there are four external members on the University's Council, who are the only external members of the Regent House).[88] Senate and the Regent House Light show on the Senate House, for the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the university Old Court, Clare College The Senate consists of all holders of the MA degree or higher degrees. It elects the Chancellor and the High Steward, and elected two members of the House of Commons until the Cambridge University constituency was abolished in 1950. Prior to 1926, it was the university's governing body, fulfilling the functions that the Regent House fulfils today.[89] The Regent House is the university's governing body, a direct democracy comprising all resident senior members of the university and the colleges, together with the Chancellor, the High Steward, the Deputy High Steward, and the Commissary.[90] The public representatives of the Regent House are the two Proctors, elected to serve for one year, on the nomination of the Colleges. Council and the General Board Although the University Council is the principal executive and policy-making body of the university, it must report and be accountable to the Regent House through a variety of checks and balances. It has the right of reporting to the university, and is obliged to advise the Regent House on matters of general concern to the university. It does both of these by causing notices to be published by authority in the Cambridge University Reporter, the official journal of the university. Since January 2005, the membership of the council has included two external members,[91] and the Regent House voted for an increase from two to four in the number of external members in March 2008,[92][93] and this was approved by Her Majesty the Queen in July 2008.[94] Senate House Passage in the snow with Senate House on the right and Gonville and Caius College on the left The General Board of the Faculties is responsible for the academic and educational policy of the university,[95] and is accountable to the council for its management of these affairs.[citation needed] Faculty Boards are responsible to the General Board; other Boards and Syndicates are responsible either to the General Board (if primarily for academic purposes) or to the council. In this way, the various arms of the university are kept under the supervision of the central administration, and thus the Regent House.[citation needed] Finances Benefactions and fundraising In 2000, Bill Gates of Microsoft donated US$210 million through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to endow the Gates Scholarships for students from outside the UK seeking postgraduate study at Cambridge.[96] In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the central university, excluding colleges, had a total income of £2.192 billion, of which £592.4 million was from research grants and contracts.[4] Over the past decade to 2019, Cambridge has received an average of £271m a year in philanthropic donations.[4] The 'Stormzy Scholarship for Black UK Students' covers tuition costs for two students and maintenance grants for up to four years.[97] In October 2021, the university paused the £400m collaboration with the United Arab Emirates, citing the claims of the Arab nation's involvement in the controversial hacking using the NSO Group's Pegasus software. As per the reports, the Emirates was the major country involved in the leak of over 50,000 phone numbers, including hundreds belonging to the British. The university's outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Stephen Toope said the decision to reconsider plans with the UAE was caused by further revelations about the Pegasus software hacking.[98] Bonds The University of Cambridge borrowed £350 million by issuing a 40-year security bond in October 2012.[99] Its interest rate is about 0.6 percent higher than a British government 40-year bond. Vice-Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz hailed the success of the issue.[100] In a 2010 report, the Russell Group of 20 leading universities made a conclusion that higher education could be financed by issuing bonds.[99] Affiliations and memberships Cambridge is a member of the Russell Group of research-led British universities, the G5, the League of European Research Universities, and the International Alliance of Research Universities, and forms part of the "golden triangle" of research intensive and southern English universities.[101] It is also closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster known as "Silicon Fen", and as part of the Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre. Academic profile Admissions Winter Pool is in the process of being merged into this section. If possible, please edit only this article, as the article mentioned above may be turned into a redirect. Relevant discussion may be found here. (December 2021) UCAS admission statistics 2019[102] 2018[103] 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 Applications[104] 19,359 18,378 17,235 16,795 16,505 16,970 16,330 Offer Rate (%)[105] 24.3 24.8 31.2 33.8 33.5 32.5 32.2 Enrols[106] 3,528 3,465 3,480 3,440 3,430 3,425 3,355 Yield (%) 75.2 76.0 64.7 60.6 62.0 62.1 63.8 Applicant/Enrolled Ratio 5.49 5.30 4.95 4.88 4.81 4.95 4.87 Average Entry Tariff[107][note 1] — — — 226 592 600 601 Peterhouse Old Court Peterhouse Old Court Great Court of Trinity College, dating back to the 16th Century Procedure Undergraduate applications to Cambridge must be made through UCAS in time for the early deadline, currently mid-October in the year before starting. Until the 1980s candidates for all subjects were required to sit special entrance examinations,[108] since replaced by additional tests for some subjects, such as the Thinking Skills Assessment and the Cambridge Law Test.[109] The university has at times considered reintroducing an admissions exam for all subjects.[110] The university gave offers of admission (typically conditional on exam results) to 33.5% of its applicants in 2016, the second lowest amongst the Russell Group, behind Oxford.[111][112][113][114] The acceptance rate for students in the 2018–2019 cycle was 18.8%.[115][116] In 2021, Cambridge introduced an 'over-subscription' clause to its offers, which allows it to withdraw places if too many students meet its entrance criteria. The clause can be invoked in the event of 'circumstances outside the reasonable control of the university'. It was introduced due to a record number of A-level pupils getting the highest grades from teacher assessment, which was introduced due to the cancellation of A-levels in the -19 pandemic.[117][118] The university's standard offer for most courses is set at A*AA,[119][120] with A*A*A for sciences courses (or equivalent in other examination systems, e.g. 7,6,6 or 7,7,6 in IB). Due to a high proportion of applicants receiving the highest school grades, the interview process is needed for distinguishing between the most able candidates. The interview is performed by College Fellows, who evaluate candidates on unexamined factors such as potential for original thinking and creativity.[121] For exceptional candidates, a Matriculation Offer was sometimes previously offered, requiring only two A-levels at grade E or above. The Sutton Trust maintains that Oxford University and Cambridge University recruit disproportionately from 8 schools which accounted for 1,310 Oxbridge places during three years, contrasted with 1,220 from 2,900 other schools.[122] Strong applicants who are not successful at their chosen college may be placed in the Winter Pool, where they can be offered places by other colleges. This is in order to maintain consistency throughout the colleges, some of which receive more applicants than others. Graduate admission is first decided by the faculty or department relating to the applicant's subject. When an offer is made, this effectively guarantees admission to a college—though not necessarily the applicant's preferred choice.[123] Access Percentage of state-school students at Oxford and Cambridge[124][125] Public debate in the United Kingdom continues over whether admissions processes at Oxford and Cambridge are entirely merit based and fair; whether enough students from state schools are encouraged to apply to Cambridge; and whether these students succeed in gaining entry. In 2020–21, 71% of all successful applicants were from state schools[126] (about 93% of all students in the UK attend state schools, and 82% of post-16 students[127]). Critics have argued that the lack of state school applicants with the required grades applying to Cambridge and Oxford has had a negative impact on Oxbridge's reputation for many years, and the university has encouraged pupils from state schools to apply for Cambridge to help redress the imbalance.[128] Others counter that government pressure to increase state school admissions constitutes inappropriate social engineering.[129][130] The proportion of undergraduates drawn from independent schools has dropped over the years, and such applicants now form a minority (29%)[131][132] of the intake. In 2020, 26% of the 3436 applicants from independent schools were admitted to Cambridge, as opposed to 23% of the 9237 applications from state schools.[133] Cambridge, together with Oxford and Durham, is among those universities that have adopted formulae that gives a rating to the GCSE performance of every school in the country to "weight" the scores of university applicants.[134][failed verification] With the release of admissions figures, a 2013 article in The Guardian reported that ethnic minority candidates had lower success rates in individual subjects even when they had the same grades as white applicants. The university was hence criticised for what was seen as institutional discrimination against ethnic minority applicants in favour of white applicants. The university denied the claims of institutional discrimination by stating the figures did not take into account "other variables".[135] A following article stated that in the years 2010–2012 ethnic minority applicants to medicine with 3 A* grades or higher were 20% less likely to gain admission than white applicants with similar grades. The university refused to provide figures for a wider range of subjects claiming it would be too costly.[136] There are a number of educational consultancies that offer support with the applications process. Some make claims of improved chances of admission but these claims are not independently verified. None of these companies are affiliated to or endorsed by the University of Cambridge. The university informs applicants that all important information regarding the application process is public knowledge and none of these services is providing any inside information.[137] Cambridge University has been criticised because many colleges admit a low proportion of black students though many apply. Of the 31 colleges at Cambridge 6 admitted fewer than 10 black or mixed race students from 2012 to 2016.[138] Figures from 2019 show that 2% of students were white and 'working class'.[139] In January 2021, Cambridge created foundation courses for 'disadvantaged' students.[140] While the usual entry requirements are A*AA in A-Levels, the one-year foundation course has 50 places for students who achieve BBB.[141] If successful on the course, students will receive a recognised CertHE qualification and can progress to degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences at Cambridge.[140] Candidates include those who have been in care, who are estranged from their families, who have missed significant periods of learning because of health issues, those from low-income backgrounds and those from schools that send few students to university.[140] Teaching Results for the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos are read out inside Senate House and then tossed from the balcony The academic year is divided into three academic terms, determined by the statutes of the university.[142] Michaelmas term lasts from October to December; Lent term from January to March; and Easter term from April to June. Within these terms undergraduate teaching takes place within eight-week periods called Full Terms. According to the university statutes, it is a requirement that during this period all students should live within 3 miles of the Church of St Mary the Great; this is defined as Keeping term. Students can graduate only if they fulfill this condition for nine terms (three years) when obtaining a Bachelor of Arts or twelve terms (four years) when studying for a Master of Science, Engineering or Mathematics.[143] These terms are shorter than those of many other British universities.[144] Undergraduates are also expected to prepare heavily in the three holidays (known as the Christmas, Easter and Long Vacations). This is why they are referred to as 'Vacations' rather than holidays; students have merely vacated the premises, but are still expected to work. Triposes involve a mixture of lectures (organised by the university departments), and supervisions (organised by the colleges). Science subjects also involve laboratory sessions, organised by the departments. The relative importance of these methods of teaching varies according to the needs of the subject. Supervisions are typically weekly hour-long sessions in which small groups of students (usually between one and three) meet with a member of the teaching staff or with a doctoral student. Students are normally required to complete an assignment in advance of the supervision, which they will discuss with the supervisor during the session, along with any concerns or difficulties they have had with the material presented in that week's lectures. The assignment is often an essay on a subject set by the supervisor, or a problem sheet set by the lecturer. Depending on the subject and college, students might receive between one and four supervisions per week.[145] This pedagogical system is often cited as being unique to Oxford (where "supervisions" are known as "tutorials")[146] and Cambridge. A tutor named William Farish developed the concept of grading students' work quantitatively at the University of Cambridge in 1792.[147] Research See also: Category:Departments of the University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge has research departments and teaching faculties in most academic disciplines. All research and lectures are conducted by university departments. The colleges are in charge of giving or arranging most supervisions, student accommodation, and funding most extracurricular activities. During the 1990s, Cambridge added a substantial number of new specialist research laboratories on several sites around the city, and major expansion continues on a number of sites.[148] Cambridge also had a research partnership with MIT in the United States: the Cambridge–MIT Institute. Graduation Graduands enter the Senate House at a graduation ceremony Unlike in most universities, the Cambridge Master of Arts is not awarded by merit of study, but by right, six years and one term after matriculation. At the University of Cambridge, each graduation is a separate act of the university's governing body, the Regent House, and must be voted on as with any other act. A formal meeting of the Regent House, known as a Congregation, is held for this purpose.[149] This is the common last act at which all the different university procedures (for: undergraduate and graduate students; and the different degrees) land. After degrees are approved, to have them conferred candidates must ask their Colleges to be presented during a Congregation. University officials leading the Vice-Chancellor's deputy into the Senate House Graduates receiving an undergraduate degree wear the academic dress that they were entitled to before graduating: for example, most students becoming Bachelors of Arts wear undergraduate gowns and not BA gowns. Graduates receiving a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD or Master's) wear the academic dress that they were entitled to before graduating, only if their first degree was also from the University of Cambridge; if their first degree is from another university, they wear the academic dress of the degree that they are about to receive, the BA gown without the strings if they are under 24 years of age, or the MA gown without strings if they are 24 and over.[150] Graduates are presented in the Senate House college by college, in order of foundation or recognition by the university, except for the royal colleges. During the congregation, graduands are brought forth by the Praelector of their college, who takes them by the right hand, and presents them to the vice-chancellor for the degree they are about to take. The Praelector presents graduands with the following Latin statement (the following forms were used when the vice-chancellor was female), substituting "____" with the name of the degree: "Dignissima domina, Domina Procancellaria et tota Academia praesento vobis hunc virum quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina esse idoneum ad gradum assequendum _____; idque tibi fide mea praesto totique Academiae. (Most worthy Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, I present to you this man whom I know to be suitable as much by character as by learning to proceed to the degree of ____; for which I pledge my faith to you and to the whole University.)" and female graduands with the following: "Dignissima domina, Domina Procancellaria et tota Academia praesento vobis hanc mulierem quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina esse idoneam ad gradum assequendum ____; idque tibi fide mea praesto totique Academiae. (Most worthy Vice-Chancellor and the whole University, I present to you this woman whom I know to be suitable as much by character as by learning to proceed to the degree of ____; for which I pledge my faith to you and to the whole University.)" After presentation, the graduand is called by name and kneels before the vice-chancellor and proffers their hands to the vice-chancellor, who clasps them and then confers the degree through the following Latin statement—the Trinitarian formula (in nomine Patris...) may be omitted at the request of the graduand: "Auctoritate mihi commissa admitto te ad gradum ____, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. (By the authority committed to me, I admit you to the degree of ____, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.)" The now-graduate then rises, bows and leaves the Senate House through the Doctor's door, where they receive their certificate, into Senate House Passage.[149] Libraries and museums Main article: Libraries of the University of Cambridge See also: Category:Museums of the University of Cambridge Trinity College's Wren Library The university has 116 libraries.[151] The Cambridge University Library is the central research library, which holds over 8 million volumes. It is a legal deposit library, therefore it is entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the UK and Ireland.[152] In addition to the University Library and its dependents, almost every faculty or department has a specialised library; for example, the History Faculty's Seeley Historical Library possesses more than 100,000 books. Furthermore, every college has a library as well, partially for the purposes of undergraduate teaching, and the older colleges often possess many early books and manuscripts in a separate library. For example, Trinity College's Wren Library has more than 200,000 books printed before 1800, while Corpus Christi College's Parker Library possesses one of the greatest collections of medieval manuscripts in the world, with over 600 manuscripts. The Fitzwilliam Museum, the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge Cambridge University operates eight arts, cultural, and scientific museums, and a botanic garden.[153] The Fitzwilliam Museum, is the art and antiquities museum, the Kettle's Yard is a contemporary art gallery, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology houses the university's collections of local antiquities, together with archaeological and ethnographic artefacts from around the world, the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology houses a wide range of zoological specimens from around the world and is known for its iconic finback whale skeleton that hangs outside. This Museum also has specimens collected by Charles Darwin. Other museums include, the Museum of Classical Archaeology, the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences which is the geology museum of the university, the Polar Museum, part of the Scott Polar Research Institute which is dedicated to Captain Scott and his men, and focuses on the exploration of the Polar Regions. The Cambridge University Botanic Garden is the botanic garden of the university, created in 1831. Publishing and assessments The university's publishing arm, the Cambridge University Press, is the oldest printer and publisher in the world, and it is the second largest university press in the world.[154][155] The university set up its Local Examination Syndicate in 1858. Today, the syndicate, which is known as Cambridge Assessment, is Europe's largest assessment agency and it plays a leading role in researching, developing and delivering assessments across the globe.[156] Reputation and rankings Rankings National rankings Complete (2023)[157] 2 Guardian (2022)[158] 2 Times / Sunday Times (2022)[159] 3 Global rankings THE (2022)[160] 5 QS (2023)[161] 2 ARWU (2021)[162] 3 Cambridge is regularly ranked within the top 5 universities in the world and is currently ranked as the second best University in the world, only behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the QS Rankings,[163] and placed it third in the world (1st in the UK) by the prestigious ARWU rankings, only behind Harvard and Stanford,[164] and fifth in the world (tied with MIT) by the 2022 Times Higher Education Rankings.[165] Cambridge also ranked fourth in the 2020 World Reputation Ranking behind Harvard, MIT and Stanford, and ahead of Oxford.[166] In April 2022, the QS Rankings ranked Cambridge's programmes among the very best in the world, with a 2nd place for Arts and Humanities, 2nd for Engineering and Technology, 4th for Life Sciences and Medicine, 3rd for Natural Sciences, and 4th for Social Sciences and Management [167] Cambridge is consistently ranked as one of the top universities in the world.[168][169][170] In 2011, Times Higher Education (THE) recognised Cambridge as one of the world's "six super brands" on its World Reputation Rankings, along with Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Oxford and Stanford.[171] Cambridge has been highly ranked by most international and UK league tables. In particular, it had topped the QS World University Rankings from 2010/11 to 2011/12.[172][173] A 2006 Newsweek overall ranking, which combined elements of the THES-QS and ARWU rankings with other factors that purportedly evaluated an institution's global "openness and diversity", suggested Cambridge was sixth around the globe.[174] In The Guardian newspaper's 2012 rankings, Cambridge had overtaken Oxford in philosophy, law, politics, theology, maths, classics, anthropology and modern languages.[175] In the 2009 Times Good University Guide Subject Rankings, it was ranked top (or joint top) in 34 out of the 42 subjects which it offers.[176] Within the UK, Cambridge is ranked at No.1 by the Times Ranking and at No. 2 by The Complete Guide. According to the 2016 Complete University Guide, the University of Cambridge is ranked first amongst the UK's universities; this ranking is based on a broad raft of criteria from entry standards and student satisfaction to quality of teaching in specific subjects and job prospects for graduates.[177] The university is ranked as the second best university in the UK for the quality of graduates according to recruiters from the UK's major companies.[178] In the 2001 and 2008 Government Research Assessment Exercises, Cambridge was ranked first in the country.[179] In 2005, it was reported that Cambridge produces more PhDs per year than any other British university (over 30% more than second placed Oxford).[180] In 2006, a Thomson Scientific study showed that Cambridge has the highest research paper output of any British university, and is also the top research producer (as assessed by total paper citation count) in 10 out of 21 major British research fields analysed.[181] Another study published the same year by Evidence showed that Cambridge won a larger proportion (6.6%) of total British research grants and contracts than any other university (coming first in three out of four broad discipline fields).[182] The university is also closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster in and around Cambridge, which forms the area known as Silicon Fen or sometimes the "Cambridge Phenomenon". In 2004, it was reported that Silicon Fen was the second largest venture capital market in the world, after Silicon Valley. Estimates reported in February 2006 suggest that there were about 250 active startup companies directly linked with the university, worth around US$6 billion.[183] Student life The University Centre main dining hall Student Unions Main article: Cambridge Students' Union All students at the University of Cambridge are represented by Cambridge Students' Union. The SU was founded in 2020 as a merger of two existing Student Unions in Cambridge: CUSU (the Cambridge University Students' Union) and the GU (the Graduate Union). CUSU previously represented all University students, and the GU solely represented graduate students.[184][185] The eight most important positions in the SU are occupied by sabbatical officers.[186] In 2020, the sabbatical officers were elected with a turnout of 20.88% of the whole student body.[187] In 2021, Cambridge Students' Union started a petition against the financial collaboration between the university and the government of the United Arab Emirates worth £400m. The Union cited the cause of the petition as the warning of the "values gap" and threat to "academic freedom and institutional autonomy" reviewed in the internal documents. Citing the grave history of violating the international law of human rights, the Cambridge UCU warned of the university staff of being vulnerable to the repression of gender, sexuality, or freedom of expression.[188] Sexual harassment In recent years, Cambridge has come under increased criticism and legal challenges for its mishandling of sexual harassment claims.[189][190] In 2019, for example, former student Danielle Bradford sued Cambridge through noted sexual harassment lawyer Ann Olivarius for how the university handled her complaint of sexual misconduct. "I was told that I should think about it very carefully because making a complaint could affect my place in my department."[191] In 2020, hundreds of current and former students accused the university in a letter of "a complete failure" to deal with complaints of sexual misconduct.[192] Sport See also: Category:Sport at the University of Cambridge The boathouse of the Cambridge University Boat Club Rowing is a particularly popular sport at Cambridge, and there are competitions between colleges, notably the bumps races, and against Oxford, the Boat Race. There are also Varsity matches against Oxford in many other sports, ranging from cricket and rugby, to chess and tiddlywinks. Athletes representing the university in certain sports are entitled to apply for a Cambridge Blue at the discretion of the Blues Committee, consisting of the captains of the thirteen most prestigious sports. There is also the self-described "unashamedly elite" Hawks' Club, which is for men only, whose membership is usually restricted to Cambridge Full Blues and Half Blues.[193] The Ospreys are the equivalent female club. The University of Cambridge Sports Centre opened in August 2013. Phase 1 included a 37x34m Sports Hall, a Fitness Suite, a Strength and Conditioning Room, a Multi-Purpose Room and Eton and Rugby Fives courts. Phase 1b included 5 glass backed squash courts and a Team Training Room. Future phases include indoor and outdoor tennis courts and a swimming pool.[194] The university also has an Athletics Track at Wilberforce Road, an Indoor Cricket School and Fenner's Cricket Ground. Societies See also: List of social activities at the University of Cambridge and Category:Clubs and societies of the University of Cambridge Stephen Fry in the Main Chamber of the Cambridge Union Numerous student-run societies exist in order to encourage people who share a common passion or interest to periodically meet or discuss. As of 2010, there were 751 registered societies.[195] In addition to these, individual colleges often promote their own societies and sports teams. Although technically independent from the university, the Cambridge Union serves as a focus for debating and public speaking, as the oldest free speech society in the world, and the largest in Cambridge. Drama societies notably include the Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC) and the comedy club Footlights, which are known for producing well-known show-business personalities. The Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra explores a range of programmes, from popular symphonies to lesser known works; membership of the orchestra is composed of students of the university. Newspapers and radio See also: Category:Publications associated with the University of Cambridge Cambridge's oldest student newspaper is Varsity. Established in 1947, notable figures to have edited the paper include Jeremy Paxman, BBC media editor Amol Rajan, and Vogue international editor Suzy Menkes. It has also featured the early writings of Zadie Smith (who appeared in Varsity's literary anthology offshoot, The Mays), Robert Webb, Tristram Hunt, and Tony Wilson. With a print run of 9,000, Varsity is the only student paper to go to print on a weekly basis. News stories from the paper have recently appeared in The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and The i. Other student publications include The Cambridge Student, which is funded by Cambridge University Students' Union and goes to print on a fortnightly basis, and The Tab. Founded by two Cambridge students in 2009, The Tab is online-only (apart from one print edition in Freshers' Week), and mostly features light-hearted features content. The Mays is a literary anthology made up of student prose, poetry, and visual art from both Cambridge and Oxford. Founded in 1992 by three Cambridge students, the anthology goes to print on an annual basis. It is overseen by Varsity Publications Ltd, the same body that is responsible for Varsity, the newspaper. There are many other journals, magazines, and zines. Another literary journal, Notes, is published roughly two times per term. Many colleges also have their own publications run by students. The student radio station, Cam FM, is run together with students from Anglia Ruskin university. One of few student radio stations to have an FM licence (frequency 97.2 MHz), the station hosts a mixture of music, talk, and sports shows. JCR and MCR The Main Hall at Christ's College In addition to university-wide representation, students can benefit from their own college student unions, which are known as JCR (Junior Combination Room) for undergraduates and MCR (Middle Combination Room) for postgraduates. These serve as a link between college staff and members and consists of officers elected annually between the fellow students; individual JCR and MCRs also report to CUSU, which offers training courses for some of the positions within the body.[196] Formal Halls and May Balls The bridge over the River Cam at Clare College during its 2005 May Ball One privilege of student life at Cambridge is the opportunity to attend formal dinners at college. These are called Formal Hall and occur regularly during term time, daily at some colleges. Students sit down for a meal in their gowns (at most colleges), while Fellows, and sometimes guests, eat separately at High Table. the beginning and end of the function is usually marked with a grace said in Latin. Special Formal Halls are organised for events such as Christmas and the Commemoration of Benefactors.[197] After the exam period, May Week is held and it is customary to celebrate by attending May Balls. These are all-night long lavish parties held in the colleges where food and drinks are served and entertainment is provided. Suicide Sunday, the first day of May Week, is a popular date for organising garden parties.[198] Notable alumni and academics Main category: Alumni of the University of Cambridge Main category: Academics of the University of Cambridge For a more comprehensive list, see List of University of Cambridge people. Further information: List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Cambridge and Alumni Cantabrigienses Over the course of its history, a number of Cambridge University academics and alumni have become notable in their fields, both academic and in the wider world. As of October 2020, 121 affiliates of the University of Cambridge have won 122 Nobel prizes (Frederick Sanger won twice[199][200]), with 70 former students of the university having won the prize. In addition, as of 2019, Cambridge alumni, faculty members and researchers have won 11 Fields Medals and 7 Turing Awards. Mathematics and sciences Charles Darwin—whose family was also benefactor of Darwin College Stephen Hawking Among the most famous of Cambridge natural philosophers is Sir Isaac Newton, who conducted many of his experiments in the grounds of Trinity College. Others are Sir Francis Bacon, who was responsible for the development of the scientific method and the mathematicians John Dee and Brook Taylor. Pure mathematicians include G. H. Hardy, John Edensor Littlewood, Mary Cartwright and Augustus De Morgan; Sir Michael Atiyah, a specialist in geometry; William Oughtred, inventor of the logarithmic scale; John Wallis, first to state the law of acceleration; Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught genius who made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series and continued fractions; and James Clerk Maxwell, who brought about the "second great unification of physics" (the first being accredited to Newton) with his classical theory of electromagnetic radiation. In 1890, mathematician Philippa Fawcett was the person with the highest score in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams, but as a woman was unable to take the title of 'Senior Wrangler'. In biology, Charles Darwin, famous for developing the theory of natural selection, was an alumnus of Christ's College, although his education was intended to allow him to become a clergyman. Biologists Francis Crick and James Watson worked out a model for the three-dimensional structure of DNA while working at the Cavendish Laboratory; Cambridge graduates Maurice Wilkins and especially Rosalind Franklin produced key X-ray crystallography data, which was shared with Watson by Wilkins. Wilkins went on to help verify the proposed structure and win the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick. More recently, Sir Ian Wilmut was part of the team responsible for the first cloning of a mammal (Dolly the Sheep in 1996), naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, ethologist Jane Goodall, expert on chimpanzees was a PhD student, anthropologist Dame Alison Richard, former vice-chancellor of the university, and Frederick Sanger, a biochemist known for developing Sanger sequencing and receiving two Nobel prizes. Despite the university's delay in admitting women to full degrees, Cambridge women were at the heart of scientific research throughout the 20th century. Notable female scientists include; biochemist Marjory Stephenson, plant physiologist Gabrielle Howard, social anthropologist Audrey Richards, psycho-analyst Alix Strachey, who with her husband translated the works of Sigmund Freud, Kavli Prize-winner Brenda Milner, co-discovery of specialised brain networks for memory and cognition. Veterinary epidemiologist Sarah Cleaveland has worked to eliminate rabies in the Serengeti.[201] The university can be considered the birthplace of the computer, mathematician and "father of the computer" Charles Babbage designed the world's first computing system as early as the mid-1800s. Alan Turing went on to devise what is essentially the basis for modern computing and Maurice Wilkes later created the first programmable computer. The webcam was also invented at Cambridge University, showing the Trojan Room coffee pot in the Computer Laboratories. In physics, Ernest Rutherford who is regarded as the father of nuclear physics, spent much of his life at the university where he worked closely with E. J. Williams and Niels Bohr, a major contributor to the understanding of the atom, J. J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron, Sir James Chadwick, discoverer of the neutron, and Sir John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, responsible for first splitting the atom. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, also studied under Rutherford and Thomson. Joan Curran devised the 'chaff' technique during the Second World War to disrupt radar on enemy planes. Paul Dirac, theoretical physicist Astronomers Sir John Herschel, Sir Arthur Eddington, Paul Dirac, the discoverer of antimatter and one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics; Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and the university's long-serving Lucasian Professor of Mathematics until 2009; and Lord Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal and former Master of Trinity College. John Polkinghorne, a mathematician before his entrance into the Anglican ministry, received the Templeton Prize for his work reconciling science and religion. Other significant scientists include Henry Cavendish, the discoverer of hydrogen; Frank Whittle, co-inventor of the jet engine; William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), who formulated the original Laws of Thermodynamics; William Fox Talbot, who invented the camera, Alfred North Whitehead, Einstein's major opponent; Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, one of the fathers of radio science; Lord Rayleigh, who made extensive contributions to both theoretical and experimental physics in the 20th century; and Georges Lemaître, who first proposed a Big Bang theory. Muhammad Iqbal, philosopher, poet Humanities, music and art In the humanities, Greek studies were inaugurated at Cambridge in the early sixteenth century by Desiderius Erasmus; contributions to the field were made by Richard Bentley and Richard Porson. John Chadwick was associated with Michael Ventris in the decipherment of Linear B. The Latinist A. E. Housman taught at Cambridge but is more widely known as a poet. Simon Ockley made a significant contribution to Arabic Studies. Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher Distinguished Cambridge academics include economists such as John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall, Milton Friedman, Joan Robinson, Piero Sraffa, Ha-Joon Chang and Amartya Sen, a former Master of Trinity College. Philosophers Sir Francis Bacon, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leo Strauss, George Santayana, G. E. M. Anscombe, Sir Karl Popper, Sir Bernard Williams, Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal and G. E. Moore were all Cambridge scholars, as were historians such as Thomas Babington Macaulay, Frederic William Maitland, Lord Acton, Joseph Needham, E. H. Carr, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Rhoda Dorsey, E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Quentin Skinner, Niall Ferguson and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Karl W Schweizer, author and historian. Religious figures have included Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury and his predecessors; William Tyndale, the biblical translator; Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley, known as the "Oxford martyrs" from the place of their execution; Benjamin Whichcote and the Cambridge Platonists; William Paley, the Christian philosopher known primarily for formulating the teleological argument for the existence of God; William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, largely responsible for the abolition of the slave trade; Evangelical churchman Charles Simeon; John William Colenso, the bishop of Natal who developed views on the interpretation of Scripture and relations with native peoples that seemed dangerously radical at the time; John Bainbridge Webster and David F. Ford, theologians; and six winners of the Templeton Prize, the highest accolade for the study of religion since its foundation in 1972. Thomas Cranmer Composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, William Sterndale Bennett, Orlando Gibbons and, more recently, Alexander Goehr, Thomas Adès, John Rutter, Julian Anderson, Judith Weir and Maury Yeston were all at Cambridge. The university has also produced instrumentalists and conductors, including Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Roger Norrington, Trevor Pinnock, Andrew Manze, Richard Egarr, Mark Elder, Richard Hickox, Christopher Hogwood, Andrew Marriner, David Munrow, Simon Standage, Endellion Quartet and Fitzwilliam Quartet. Although known primarily for its choral music, the university has also produced members of contemporary bands such as Radiohead, Hot Chip, Procol Harum, Clean Bandit, Sports Team songwriter and entertainer Jonathan King, Henry Cow, and the singer-songwriter Nick Drake. Artists Quentin Blake, Roger Fry, Rose Ferraby and Julian Trevelyan, sculptors Antony Gormley, Marc Quinn and Sir Anthony Caro, and photographers Antony Armstrong-Jones, Sir Cecil Beaton and Mick Rock all attended as undergraduates. Literature The Marlowe portrait, often claimed to be Christopher Marlowe, playwright Writers to have studied at the university include the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, his fellow University Wits Thomas Nashe and Robert Greene, arguably the first professional authors in England, and John Fletcher, who collaborated with Shakespeare on The Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII and the lost Cardenio and succeeded him as house playwright of The King's Men. Samuel Pepys matriculated in 1650, known for his diary, the original manuscripts of which are now housed in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College. Lawrence Sterne, whose novel Tristram Shandy is judged to have inspired many modern narrative devices and styles. In the following century, the novelists W. M. Thackeray, best known for Vanity Fair, Charles Kingsley, author of Westward Ho! and Water Babies, and Samuel Butler, remembered for The Way of All Flesh and Erewhon, were all at Cambridge. Ghost story writer M. R. James served as provost of King's College from 1905 to 1918. Novelist Amy Levy was the first Jewish woman to attend the university. Modernist writers to have attended the university include E. M. Forster, Rosamond Lehmann, Vladimir Nabokov, Christopher Isherwood and Malcolm Lowry. Although not a student, Virginia Woolf wrote her essay A Room of One's Own while in residence at Newnham College. Playwright J. B. Priestley, physicist and novelist C. P. Snow and children's writer A. A. Milne were also among those who passed through the university in the early 20th century. They were followed by the postmodernists Patrick White, J. G. Ballard, and the early postcolonial writer E. R. Braithwaite. More recently, alumni include comedy writers Douglas Adams, Tom Sharpe and Howard Jacobson, the popular novelists A. S. Byatt, Sir Salman Rushdie, Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Louise Dean, Robert Harris and Sebastian Faulks, the action writers Michael Crichton, David Gibbins and Jin Yong, and contemporary playwrights and screenwriters such as Julian Fellowes, Stephen Poliakoff, Michael Frayn and Sir Peter Shaffer. Lord Byron, English poet Zadie Smith, Author Cambridge poets include Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, the Metaphysical poets John Donne (who penned "For Whom the Bell Tolls"), George Herbert and Andrew Marvell, John Milton, renowned for his late epic Paradise Lost, the Restoration poet and playwright John Dryden, the pre-romantic Thomas Gray, best known his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose joint work Lyrical Ballads is often seen to mark the beginning of the Romantic movement, later Romantics such as Lord Byron and the postromantic Alfred, Lord Tennyson, authors of the best known carpe diem poems including Robert Herrick best known "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" with the first line "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" and Andrew Marvell who authored "To His Coy Mistress", classical scholar and lyric poet A. E. Housman, war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, modernist T. E. Hulme, confessional poets Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and John Berryman, and, more recently, Cecil Day-Lewis, Joseph Brodsky, Kathleen Raine and Geoffrey Hill. At least nine of the Poets Laureate graduated from Cambridge. The university has also made a notable contribution to literary criticism, having produced, among others, F. R. Leavis, I. A. Richards, C. K. Ogden and William Empson, often collectively known as the Cambridge Critics, the Marxists Raymond Williams, sometimes regarded as the founding father of cultural studies, and Terry Eagleton, author of Literary Theory: An Introduction, the most successful academic book ever published, the Aesthetician Harold Bloom, the New Historicist Stephen Greenblatt, and biographical writers such as Lytton Strachey, a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, Peter Ackroyd and Claire Tomalin. Stephen Fry, comedian and actor Actors and directors such as Sir Ian McKellen, Eleanor Bron, Miriam Margolyes, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir Michael Redgrave, James Mason, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese, John Oliver, Freddie Highmore, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Simon Russell Beale, Tilda Swinton, Thandie Newton, Georgie Henley, Rachel Weisz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Tom Hiddleston, Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Eddie Redmayne, Dan Stevens, Jamie Bamber, Lily Cole, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Richard Ayoade, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins all studied at the university, as did directors such as Mike Newell, Sam Mendes, Stephen Frears, Paul Greengrass, Chris Weitz and John Madden. Sports As of 2016, athletes who are university graduates or attendees had won a total of 194 Olympic medals, including 88 gold.[14] The legendary Chinese six-time world table tennis champion Deng Yaping; the sprinter and athletics hero Harold Abrahams; the inventors of the modern game of football, H. de Winton and J. C. Thring; and George Mallory, the famed mountaineer all attended Cambridge. Furthermore, Indian Cricketer Colonel H. H. Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji II, Jam Saheb of Nawanagar (often known as Ranji), is widely regarded as one of the best batsmen of not only his generation but also all time. He only played for one year at the university from 1893 to 1894. Education Notable educationalists to have attended the university include the founders and early professors of Harvard University, including John Harvard himself; Emily Davies, founder of Girton College, the first residential higher education institution for women, and John Haden Badley, founder of the first mixed-sex public school (i.e. not public) in England; Anil Kumar Gain, 20th century mathematician and founder of the Vidyasagar University in Bengal, Siram Govindarajulu Naidu founder vice chancellor of Sri Venkateswara University and Menachem Ben-Sasson, Israeli president of Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Politics Cambridge has a strong reputation in the field of politics, having educated:[202] Fourteen British Prime Ministers, including Robert Walpole, considered to be the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. At least 30 foreign Heads of State/Government, including presidents of India, Ireland, Zambia, South Korea, Uganda and Trinidad and Tobago; along with Prime Ministers of India, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, Poland, Australia, France, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malta, Thailand, Malaysia, and Jordan. At least nine monarchs, including Edward VII, George VI, King Peter II of Yugoslavia, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Sofía of Spain. The university has also educated Charles, Prince of Wales and a large number of other royals. Three signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence (Thomas Lynch Jr., Arthur Middleton, Thomas Nelson Jr.).[203] Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England (1653–58).[204] Technology Cambridge has a long history of developing technological talent, boasting a rich list of companies founded by Cambridge alumni. Notably, the following alumni: Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc behind the AlphaGo and AlphaFold breakthroughs in AI. Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, co-founders of ARM, a British semiconductor and software design company still based in Cambridge. Sam Chaudhary, co-founder of ClassDojo, a San Francisco-based EdTech company connecting teachers with their students and families. Philip Kwok, co-founder of EasyA, an EdTech company which gets students 1:1 academic help from tutors in minutes. Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman, an email messaging app which reduces the time people need to spend on emails. Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead, co-founders of Improbable, a British multinational company developing video game simulation software. In literature and popular culture See also: List of fictional Cambridge colleges Throughout its history, the university has frequently featured in literature and artistic works by various authors. As of 2020, IMDb lists 71 films or TV shows that include Cambridge as a filming location.[205] Cambridge was mentioned as early as the 14th century in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In The Reeve's Tale, the two main characters are students at a Cambridge college called "Soler Halle". It is believed that this refers to King's Hall, which is now part of Trinity College.[206] The university has been the setting for all or part of numerous novels, including Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Rose Macaulay's They Were Defeated,[207] and Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue.[208] Other notable examples of Cambridge in popular culture include: Xu Zhimo's best-known poem (1928) is Zaibie Kangqiao (simplified Chinese: 再别康桥; traditional Chinese: 再別康橋;.: 'again (or "once more") leave Cambridge'), variously translated into English as "On Leaving Cambridge", "Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again", "Goodbye Again, Cambridge", etc. The poem is part of China's national curriculum taught to all schoolchildren and has generated a tremendous amount of adoration of Cambridge in China.[209] In the Psmith series (1908–1923 collection of novels) by P. G. Wodehouse, both the title character and Mike, his closest friend, study at Cambridge University. Chariots of Fire (1981 film) by Hugh Hudson is partly set at Cambridge between 1919 and 1924, when protagonist Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) was a student there. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983) features Churchill College in the "church scene". Many members of Monty Python are Cambridge alumni. True Blue (1996) is a film about the mutiny at the time of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race of 1987. The History Boys (2008) is a film about a group of boys applying to do history at Oxford and Cambridge. In Guy Richie's 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Sherlock Holmes is shown meeting his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in Moriarty's office, with a brief stock shot establishing this as King's College, where Moriarty is a professor. In James Marsh's 2014 Biographical film The Theory of Everything, young Stephen Hawking falls in love with literature student Jane Wilde at Cambridge University, where both of them study. The Imitation Game is a 2014 historical drama that features Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) prominently. Several lines in the film's dialogue make reference to Turing being a Cambridge alumnus and fellow of King's College of Cambridge. The 2015 film The Man Who Knew Infinity about mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan was filmed at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Ramanujan was a fellow. 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