Trinity College, Cambridge
constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge , England . Trinity is the largest and richest of the colleges in Cambridge, and is now a home to around 600 undergraduates, 300 graduates, and over 160 Fellows.
The college was founded by Henry VIII in 1546 and most of its major buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Trinity was formed by combining Michaelhouse and King's Hall , two older colleges. Michaelhouse had existed since 1324 ; King's Hall had been established by Edward II in 1317 and refounded by Edward III in 1337 .
Much of the college was re-designed and re-built by Thomas Nevile , who became Master of Trinity in 1593 . This work included the construction of Nevile's Court between Great Court and the river Cam . The Court was completed in the late 17th century when the Wren Library , designed by Sir Christopher Wren , was built.
Its sister college is Christ Church, Oxford , which was founded by Henry VIII in the same year.
Trinity's rowing club is the First and Third Trinity Boat Club .
Trinity has a strong academic tradition and has provided four Fields Medallists , as well as 31 Nobel prize laureates since they were first awarded in 1901.
Trinity Nobel Prize winners
Notable alumni
George Gascoigne 1525-1577 Poet, dramatist - Jocasta, The Glasse of Government
John Dee 1527-1608 Alchemist, geographer, mathematician
Sir Edward Coke 1552-1634 Lawyer, politician; Chief Justice of the King's Bench
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans 1561-1626 Lawyer, philosopher; Lord Chancellor
Sir Henry Spelman 1562-1641 Antiquary - 'Reliquiae Spelmannianae'
Sir John Coke 1563-1644 politician
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex 1566-1601 Soldier, courtier to Elizabeth I; executed for rebellion
Giles Fletcher 1588-1623 Poet - Christ's Victory and Triumph
George Herbert 1593-1633 Poet - The Temple; MP (Montgomery)
Thomas Randolph 1605-1635 Poet, dramatist
Sir John Suckling 1609-1642 Poet, dramatist
John Pell 1610-1685 Mathematician
Abraham Cowley 1618-1667 Poet, dramatist - The Mistress
Andrew Marvell 1621-1678 Poet -'Horatian Ode', The Rehearsal Transpros'd; MP (Hull)
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham 1628-1687 Wit, politician, dramatist - The Rehearsal; member of the 'Cabal '
John Ray 1627-1705 Naturalist; created the principles of plant classification
John Dryden 1631-1700 Poet Laureate -Absalom and Achitophel; Translator of Virgil
Francis Willughby 1635-1672 Naturalist
Sir Isaac Newton 1642-1727 Mathematician, physicist; MP (Cambridge University)
George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys 1645-1689 Judge - 'Bloody Assizes'; Lord Chancellor
Nathaniel Lee 1649-1692 Dramatist - The Rival Queens
Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester (1656-1722) Whig statesman
Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax 1661-1715 Founded Bank of England, 1694; Chancellor of Exchequer
Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset 1662-1748 Politician and Whig Grandee
George Montague-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax 1716-1771 Secretary of State
John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich 1718-1792 First Lord of the Admiralty; invented the 'sandwich'
Richard Cumberland 1732-1811 Playwright - The Brothers, The West Indian
Thomas Nelson 1738-1789 Signatory of the American Declaration of Independence
Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine 1750-1823 Lord Chancellor, jurist
George Crabbe 1754-1832 Poet; did not matriculate
Richard Porson 1759-1808 Classical scholar
Spencer Perceval 1762-1812 Prime Minister 1809-1812 (Tory); assassinated
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey 1764-1845 Prime Minister 1830-1834 (Whig); Great Reform Act (1832)
Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford 1765-1802 Whig aristocrat
John Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst 1772-1863 Lawyer; Lord Chancellor 1827-1830; 1834-1835; 1841-1846
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne 1779-1848 Prime Minister 1834, 1835-1841 (Whig)
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne 1780-1863 Whig statesman
Charles Pepys, 1st Earl of Cottenham 1781-1851 lawyer, Lord Chancellor 1846-1850
John Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl Spencer 1782-1845 Known as Lord Althorp; Chancellor of the Exchequer
Henry Goulburn 1784-1856 Chancellor of the Exchequer
Adam Sedgwick 1785-1873 Geologist
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron 1788-1824 Poet - `She Walks in Beauty', Don Juan
Charles Babbage 1791-1871 Mathematician; Built the forerunner of modern computers
Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby 1797-1863 Politician
Thomas Macaulay 1800-1859 Historian, essayist
William Fox Talbot 1800-1877 Inventor of photography
Sir George Airy 1801-1895 Astronomer, geophysicist
William Smith O'Brien 1803-1864 Irish Nationalist
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton 1803-1873 Novelist - The Last Days of Pompeii; politician
James Challis 1803-1882 Astronomer; twice observed Neptune without noting it, before its discovery
Frederick Maurice 1805-1872 Theologian, writer, Christian Socialist
Augustus De Morgan 1806-1871 Mathematician; symbolic logic
Richard Chenevix Trench 1807-1888 Poet, Archbishop of Dublin; Theorist of English Language
James Spedding 1808-1881 Scholar; editor of Bacon's Works
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton 1809-1885 Politician, man of letters
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson 1809-1892 Poet - Maud, In Memoriam
Edward FitzGerald 1809-1883 Poet - `The Rubá iyá t of Omar Khayyá m'
William M. Thackeray 1811-1863 Novelist - Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond
Tom Taylor 1817-1880 Scottish dramatist; editor of Punch
Thomas Wade 1818-1895 Diplomat; invented Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration
John Manners, 7th Duke of Rutland (also known as Lord John Manners) 1818-1906 Conservative statesman
Arthur Cayley 1821-1895 Mathematician; non-Euclidean geometry, invented matrices
Sir Francis Galton 1822-1911 Scientist; meteorology, heredity
Brooke Westcott 1825-1901 Canon of Westminster, Bishop of Durham
Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby 1826-1893 Foreign Secretary
William Waddington 1826-1894 French Prime Minister 1879; archaeologist
Sir William Vernon Harcourt 1827-1904 Liberal statesman; home secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Hugh Childers 1827-1896 Australian statesman, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer
Joseph Barber Lightfoot 1828-1889 Bishop of Durham; theologian
Edward White Benson 1829-1896 Archbishop of Canterbury, 1883-1896
James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879 Physicist; electromagnetism
Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire (also known as Marquess of Hartington) 1833-1908; politician
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 1834-1902 Historian
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 1836-1908 Prime Minister 1905-1908 (Liberal)
Sir Michael Foster 1836-1907 Physiologist; MP (London University)
Henry Sidgwick 1838-1900 Philosopher, major proponent of women's colleges
Sir George Otto Trevelyan 1838-1928 Historian; MP; Father of G. M. Trevelyan
T. J. Cobden Sanderson 1840-1922 Bookbinder; Arts and Crafts Movement pioneer.
Sir Richard Jebb 1841-1905 Greek scholar
King Edward VII 1841-1910 Reigned 1901-1910
Sir Frederick Pollock 1845-1937 Jurist
Edmund Gosse 1845-1928 Poet, critic - On Viol and Flute
Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour 1848-1930 Prime Minister 1902-1905 (Conservative)
Frederick W. Maitland 1850-1906 Legal historian
Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey 1851-1917 Governor-General of Canada 1904-1911
Sir Charles Stanford 1852-1924 Composer, organist
Sir James Frazer 1854-1941 Anthropologist; writer - The Golden Bough
A. E. Housman 1859-1936 Poet - A Shropshire Lad; Classical scholar
A. N. Whitehead 1861-1947 Philosopher, mathematician
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon 1866-1923 Egyptologist; funded the discovery of Tut'ankhamun's tomb
Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon 1866-1941 Administrator; Viceroy of India
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley 1867-1947 Prime Minister 1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37 (Conservative)
Erskine Childers 1870-1922 Writer, Irish Nationalist - The Riddle of The Sands
Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872-1958 Composer - Sea Symphony, Pilgrim's Progress
Prince Ranjitsinhji 1872-1933 Cricketer; Indian Prince
G. E. Moore 1873-1958 Philosopher
Aleister Crowley 1875-1947 Writer and 'Magician'; 'the wickedest man alive'
Mohammed Iqbal 1875-1938 Islamic poet and philosopher
Charles Rolls 1877-1910 Co-founder of Rolls-Royce; aviator
Sir James Jeans 1877-1946 Astronomer, mathematician; stellar evolution
G. H. Hardy 1877-1947 Mathematician; A Mathematician's Apology
Lytton Strachey 1880-1932 Biographer - Eminent Victorians; Bloomsbury Group
Leonard Woolf 1880-1969 Writer; husband of Virginia; Bloomsbury Group
Clive Bell 1881-1964 Art and literary critic; husband of Vanessa
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown 1881-1955 Social anthropologist
A. A. Milne 1882-1956 Novelist - Winnie the Pooh
Sir Arthur Eddington 1882-1944 Astronomer
John Edensor Littlewood 1885-1977 Mathematician; Fourier Series, Zeta Function
Harry Philby 1885-1960 Explorer of Arabia; father of Kim
Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor 1886-1975 Physicist, mathematician; Fluid dynamics, crystals
C. D. Broad 1887-1971 Philosopher
Srinivasa Ramanujan 1887-1920 Mathematician; analytic number theory, elliptic integrals
Sydney Chapman 1888-1970 Mathematician, geophysicist; kinetic theory, geomagnetism
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951 Philosopher
Jawaharlal Nehru 1889-1964 First Prime Minister of India, 1949-1964
King George VI 1895-1952 Reigned 1936-1952
Edward Arthur Milne 1896-1950 Mathematician
Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977 Russian and English novelist - Lolita
Christopher Hinton, Baron Hinton of Bankside 1901-1983 Nuclear engineer; constructed Calder Hall, the first large scale reactor
George 'Gubby' Allen 1902-1989 Cricketer - captained England; played in Bodyline series
Frank Plumpton Ramsey 1903-1930 Philosopher, mathematician, economist
Otto Frisch 1904-1979 Nuclear physicist; first used the term 'nuclear fission'
Erskine Childers 1905-1974 President of the Irish Republic, 1973-74
John Lehmann 1907-1987 Poet, man of letters; inaugurated The London Magazine
Anthony Blunt 1907-1983 Soviet spy; art historian
Sir Peter Scott 1909-1989 Artist, ornithologist; Olympic sailor (1936)
Nicholas Monsarrat 1910-1979 Novelist - The Cruel Sea
Guy Burgess 1910-1963 Soviet spy and traitor
Kim Philby 1911-1988 Double agent; communist
Enoch Powell 1912-1998 Statesman; Minister of Health, 1960-3
William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw 1918-1999 Statesman; Home Secretary, 1979-83
John Robinson 1919-1983 Theologian; Bishop of Woolwich, Dean of Trinity
Alexander Ramsay of Mar 1919-2001 great grandson of Queen Victoria
Raymond Williams 1921-1988 Marxist critic, novelist - The Country and the City
Rajiv Gandhi 1944-1989 Prime Minister of India, 1984-1989
Jonathan King born 1944 Pop impresario and sex offender
The Prince of Wales born 1948
Antony Gormley born 1950 Sculptor, best known for Angel of the North 1968-71
List of Masters
The head of Trinity College is the Master. The first Master was John Redman who was appointed in 1546 . The role is a Royal appointment and in the past was sometimes made by the Monarch as a favour to an important person. Nowadays the Fellows of the College, and to a lesser extent the Government, choose the new Master and the Royal role is only nominal. A complete list of the Masters of Trinity is below.
Former deans