The system of education in great britain

T
HE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION IN 
G
REAT 
B
RITAIN
8 
Cambridge remained fairly insignificant until about 1502, when a professorship 
of divinity was founded – the oldest in the university. In 1511 Desiderius Erasmus 
went to Cambridge and did much to inculcate the new learning of the Renaissance 
there. In 1546 Henry VIII founded Trinity College (which was and still remains the 
largest of the Cambridge colleges). In 1570 Elizabeth I gave the university a revised 
body of statutes, and in 1571 the university was formally incorporated by act of Par-
liament. The new statutes, which remained in force for nearly three centuries, vested 
the effective government of the university in the heads of colleges. Membership of 
the university was no longer envisaged without membership of a college.
In 1663 the Lucasian professorship of mathematics was founded under the will 
of a former member of the university, and six years later the first holder resigned in 
favour of Isaac Newton, then a young fellow of Trinity. Newton held the chair for 
over 30 years and gave the study of mathematics a unique position in the university. 
When the honours examination came into being in the 18
th
century, it was primarily 
mathematical. (It was called the tripos, after the three-legged stool used formerly at 
disputations; and candidates placed in the first class were known as wranglers from 
the style of argument at a disputation.) A classical tripos was instituted in 1824, and 
tripos in natural sciences and moral sciences were added in 1851.
In 1871 the university established the Cavendish professorship of experimental 
physics and began the building of the Cavendish Laboratory. James Clerk Maxwell 
(second wrangler in 1854) was the first professor, beginning a leadership in physics 
at the university that would be continued by J.J. Thomson and Ernest Rutherford. 
Here, too, the team of Max Ferdinand Perutz and John Cowdery Kendrew and the 
team of Francis Crick and James Watson elucidated the structures of proteins and of 
the double-helix DNA, to found the modern science of molecular biology. Earlier 
came the work of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who, more than perhaps any other 
man, can be hailed as the founder of biochemistry. Noted Cambridge scholars in 
other fields have been the naturalist Charles Darwin, the economist John Maynard 
Keynes, and the historian G.M. Trevelyan.
The colleges and collegiate institutions of the university are: Christ’s (1505), 
Churchill (1960), Clare (1326), Clare Hall (1966), Corpus Christi (1352), Darwin 
(1964), Downing (1800), Emmanuel (1584), Fitzwilliam (1869), Girton (1869), 
Gonville and Caius (1348), Homerton (1977), Hughes Hall (1885), Jesus (1496), 
King’s (1441), Lucy Cavendish (1965), Magdalene (1542), New Hall (1954), Newn-
ham (1871), Pembroke (1347), Peterhouse (1284), Queens’ (1448), Robinson (1977), 
St. Catharine’s (1473), St. Edmund’s House (1896), St. John’s (1511), Selwyn 
(1882), Sidney Sussex (1596), Trinity (1546), Trinity Hall (1350), and Wolfson 
(1965).
Many of the college buildings are rich in history and tradition. King’s College 
Chapel, begun in 1446, is one of Britain’s most magnificent buildings. The mulberry 
tree under which the poet John Milton is reputed to have written Lycidas is on the 
grounds of Christ’s College. Samuel Pepys's library, housed in the original cases, is 
at Magdalene College. Two of the colleges contain chapels designed by Christopher 
Wren – Pembroke and Emmanuel. The gardens and grounds of the colleges along the 

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