University of Cambridge

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According to legend the University of Cambridge in England was founded in 1209 by scholars escaping Oxford after a fight with Oxford locals. King Henry III of England granted them a teaching monopoly in 1231.

Along with the University of Oxford, Cambridge University produces a large proportion of Britain's prominent scientists, writers, and politicians; the pair are known as Oxbridge. Both are members of the Russell Group of Universities.

The University is constituted as a group of thirty-one independent colleges. Each college still retains considerable autonomy within the University.

The first college was Peterhouse founded in 1284 by Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely. The second-oldest college is King's Hall which was founded in 1317. Most colleges were founded during the fifteenth century. They are Michaelhouse, Clare College, Pembroke College, Gonville Hall, Trinity Hall, Corpus Christi College, King's, Queens' and St Catharine's.

During those early times the colleges were founded so that their students would pray for the souls of the founders and were often associated with chapels. In conjunction with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in 1536 King Henry VIII ordered the University to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching "scholastic philosophy." So instead of focusing on canon law, the colleges' curricula then became centered on the Greek and Latin classics, the Bible, and mathematics.

The first colleges for women were Girton College in 1869 and Newnham College in 1872. The first women students were examined in 1882 but attempts to make women full members of the university did not succeed until 1947, 20 years later than at Oxford.

Colleges of the University of Cambridge :


Famous Cambridge scholars :

See also Cambridge University Press, punting, Russell Group of Universities

See the official web site at http://www.cam.ac.uk/

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