| Gonville and Caius College | |
|---|---|
| University of Cambridge | |
 Gonville & Caius College fromKing's Parade | |
 Arms of Gonville & Caius College | |
| Scarf colours: four equal stripes alternating black and Cambridge blue | |
| Location | Trinity Street (map) |
| Coordinates | 52°12′21″N0°07′04″E / 52.2059°N 0.1179°E /52.2059; 0.1179 |
| Abbreviation | CAI[1] |
| Founders |
|
| Established | 1348, refounded 1557 |
| Previous names |
|
| Sister college | Brasenose College, Oxford |
| Master | Pippa Rogerson |
| Undergraduates | 618 (2022-23) |
| Postgraduates | 256 (2022-23) |
| Endowment | £254.5m(2022)[2] |
| Website | www |
| Boat club | www |
| Map | |
  Location in Central Cambridge | |
Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply asCaius (/kiːz/KEEZ), is aconstituent college of theUniversity of Cambridge[3] inCambridge, England. Founded in 1348 byEdmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of the wealthiest. In 1557, it was refounded byJohn Caius, an alumnus and English physician.
The college has been attended by many students who have gone on to significant accomplishment, including fifteenNobel Prize winners, the second-largest number of anyOxbridge college.[4][5][6]
Several streets in the city, including Harvey Road, Glisson Road, and Gresham Road, are named after Gonville and Caius alumni.[7] The college and its masters have been influential in the development of the university, including in the founding of other colleges, includingTrinity Hall andDarwin College and providing land onSidgwick Site on which theFaculty of Law was built.
The college was founded in 1348 asGonville Hall byEdmund Gonville, a clergyman who hailed from a gentry family of French origin. Gonville held various positions in the English Church, serving as Rector of three parishes,Thelnetham (1320–26),Rushford, Norfolk (1326–1342), andTerrington St Clement (1343–1351). Such occupations afforded him sufficient wealth that he was able to lend money toEdward III, an act that saw him appointed aKing's Clerk.[8]
With the support ofSir Walter Manny, Gonville petitioned the king for permission to found a college at Cambridge consisting of 20 scholars. In January 1348, Edward III granted this request and issuedLetters patent. Its 1348 founding makes Gonville and Caius the fourth-oldest surviving college at Cambridge.
Gonville died three years later, in 1351, and left behind an institution that had begun to struggle financially.William Bateman,Bishop of Norwich, intervened and moved the college to its current location off Trinity Street in central Cambridge. He also leased himself land close to theRiver Cam to set up his own college,Trinity Hall. Gonville Hall was renamedThe Hall of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Bateman appointed his former chaplainJohn Colton, who was later madeArchbishop of Armagh, as the college's master.
By the sixteenth century, the college had fallen into disrepair. In 1557, it was refounded byRoyal Charter as Gonville and Caius College by alumnusJohn Caius.[9] Caius had read divinity at the college between 1529 and 1533 and later travelled toRenaissance Italy, where he studied medicine at theUniversity of Padua underMontanus andVesalius. Following his return to England, Caius had become a renowned physician and served many terms as president of theRoyal College of Physicians. At the time of the college's re-founding, he had worked as physician to two English monarchs,Edward VI andMary I, and later served in the same capacity forElizabeth I.[10]
Following the death ofThomas Bacon, Caius was appointed master of the college on 24 January 1559, a position he held until shortly before his own death in 1573. He provided the college with significant funds and greatly expanded the college's buildings. Caius accepted no payment for his services but insisted on several rules, including that the college admit no scholar who "is deformed, dumb, blind, lame, maimed, mutilated, a Welshman, or suffering from any grave or contagious illness, or an invalid, that is sick in a serious measure".[11] Caius also built a three-sided court, Caius Court, "lest the air from being confined within a narrow space should become foul". Caius was responsible for developing the college's strong global reputation in medicine, which continues to this day.
By 1630, the college had expanded greatly with roughly 25 fellows and 150 students. But the number of fellows and students fell in the following century, returning to the 1630 level only in the early nineteenth century. Since then, Gonville and Caius has grown considerably, and it has now one of the University of Cambridge's largest undergraduate populations. In 1979, the college first admitted women as fellows and students.[citation needed] It now has over 110 Fellows, over 700 students and about 200 staff.
Gonville and Caius is one of the wealthiest of all Cambridge colleges with an endowment of £221 million in 2018.[12]
The college's present 43rdMaster, appointed in 2018, isPippa Rogerson.[13]
The first buildings erected on the college's current site date from 1353 when Bateman built Gonville Court. The college chapel was added in 1393 with the Old Hall (used until recently as a library); Master's Lodge followed in the next half century. Most of the stone used to build the college came fromRamsey Abbey nearRamsey, Cambridgeshire. Gonville and Caius has the oldest purpose-built college chapel in continuous use in eitherOxford orCambridge. The chapel is situated centrally within the college, reflecting the college's religious foundation.
On the re-foundation by Caius, the college was expanded and updated. In 1565, the building of Caius Court began, and Caius planted an avenue of trees in what is now known as Tree Court.
Caius was also responsible for building the college's three gates, symbolising the path of academic life:
The buildings expert James D. Wenn has identified number of meanings in the gate of honour associated with the practice of medicine inclassical antiquity,Plato and the geometry of therhombic dodecahedron.[14][15][16]
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The Gate of Honour is only used for special occasions, including graduation (Students of Gonville and Caius commonly refer to a fourth gate in the college, between Tree Court and Gonville Court, which also gives access to some lavatories, as the Gate of Necessity).
The buildings of Gonville Court were given classical facades in the 1750s. The Old Library and Hall were designed byAnthony Salvin in 1854. On the wall of the Hall hangs a college flag, which in 1912 was flown at theSouth Pole by Cambridge'sEdward Wilson during theTerra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913. Gonville Court, though remodelled in the 18th and 19th centuries, is the oldest part of the college. New lecture rooms were designed byAlfred Waterhouse and completed byRattee and Kett in 1884.[17]
Caius owns a substantial amount of land betweenWest Road andSidgwick Avenue. Set in landscaped gardens, the modern Harvey Court (named afterWilliam Harvey and designed byLeslie Martin) was built on West Road in 1961. Adjacent to Harvey Court is the Stephen Hawking Building, which opened its doors to first-year undergraduates in October 2006. The Stephen Hawking Building provides en-suite accommodation for 75 students and eight fellows as well as conference facilities.
Additional buildings provide housing for older students, a day care, and various study and music rooms. The college also owns extensive gardens and the land on which the adjacentSquire Law Library has stood since 1995.
Caius has one of the largest libraries inOxbridge, housed in the Cockerell Building.[18] Caius acquired the lease on the building, which previously housed theSeeley History Library and theSquire Law Library, in the 1990s. The college library was relocated there from Gonville Court in the summer of 1996, following an extensive renovation.
AcrossTrinity Street on land surroundingSt Michael's Church. St Michael's Court was completed in the 1930s; on the south side of St Michael's Court is new campus building that overlooks Market Place. The college also owns several houses around Cambridge, on Mortimer Road and Gresham Road, where some second year undergraduates live, and on Harvey Road and St Paul's Road, which are occupied by graduate students.
The Fellows' garden lies just beyond Harvey Court, onSidgwick Avenue. The extensive sports fields are located onBarton Road, a short walk from Harvey Court.
Gonville and Caius College maintains many traditions. It offers two seatings in Hall six nights a week. Typically attended by between 150–200 students, Hall consists of a three-course meal served after 18:00 (First Hall) or 19:20 (Formal Hall);[19] Formal Hall requires a gown be worn, and seats Fellows at its high table. It is preceded by the benediction, which is said inLatin:
Benedic, Domine, nobis et donis tuis quae ex largitate tua sumus sumpturi; et concede ut, ab iis salubriter enutriti, tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus, per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum; mensae caelestis nos participes facias, Rex aeternae gloriae.[20]
There is the expectation that undergraduate students dine a minimum of 31 times each term known as the minimum dining requirement.[5]
As at most Oxbridge colleges, it is tradition that only the Fellows may walk on the grass.[21]
The college also enforces the system ofexeats or official permissions to leave the college. Students wishing to be absent from college overnight during term time must obtain leave to do so from their tutors, and terminal exeats must be obtained before the end of term.[22]
Caius Boat Club is the college's boat club, with the men's 1stVIII remaining unbeaten in the seasons of 2010/11 and of 2011/2012, and is currently in possession of the MayBumps headship (as well as second place in the Lent bumps, behindLMBC).[23]
Caius Jazz takes place most terms in the college bar, inviting 'some of the most illustrious names in the contemporary scene' and a house band of students studying at London conservatoires to play in the college bar.[24] In recent years Steve Fishwick, Sam Mayne, Ian Shaw, Barry Green, Gareth Lockrane, and Paul Jarvis have all been featured.
The CaiusMay Ball is an all-night party in June, held every two years.
Squires is an all-male drinking society founded in the 1980s; although it is not officially affiliated with the college, all of its members are Caians. They hold an annual garden party to kick off May Week. The female equivalent is called the Cupids.
Gonville & Caius College Choir is a mixed choir of 24 voices. It is one of the UK's leading collegiate choirs, with an international reputation for performances of exceptional quality but also for innovative and adventurous recordings. It tours regularly in the UK and around the world.
The College's musical tradition began at the end of the nineteenth century with a choir of men and boys, founded by the celebrated composer of Anglican church musicCharles Wood, and later became an exclusively undergraduate male choir under Wood's successor the composerPatrick Hadley. Hadley was succeeded byPeter Tranchell, under whose direction the choir became mixed in 1979, andGeoffrey Webber directed the choir from 1989 until 2019. The current Director of Music (Precentor) is the Organist and ComposerMatthew Martin.
The college's union is Gonville and Caius Student Union (GCSU). Oscar John Poulson is the 2024–25 president.[25]
Since its founding, Gonville and Caius has graduatedaccomplished and famed individuals across most fields, including 15Nobel Prize laureates:
.jpg)
The Welshman, Wallicum in the Latin original, is an absurd intruder in this list... Had he but said 'Gallicum', French, then we might detect a reference to the morbus Gallicus, venereal disease... Probably it is a scribal error for Gallicum
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