Educated at King’s College. Made a Fellow at Magdalene in 1900. Director of Studies in Classics, Senior Tutor, Praelector, President (1937-1946). A good Greek scholar, though a somewhat eccentric character, obsessed by all matters digestive.
Obituary - College Magazine, October 1956
Matriculated in 1753; Senior Wrangler, 1757; Fellow, 1758-1776.
At the age of 24 he was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, 1760-1798.
Fellow of the Royal Society, 1763 – Copley medallist.
Although a qualified (if nervous) physician, he abandoned medicine for mathematics and became ‘Magdalene’s greatest mathematical don. In his prime he was the most famous mathematician in England…lonely, disturbed, isolated…a mathematical genius’ (Dr S. Martin). He wrote ‘one of the most abstruse books written on the abstrusest parts of Algebra’, which made his name famous throughout Europe.
Admitted to Trinity College in 1819 and migrated to Magdalene in May 1822. Fellow, 1823-1832. Vicar of Shobdon, Hereford, 1847-1854. Archdeacon of Salop, 1851-1877. Canon of Hereford, 1870-1877.
London line and mezzotint engraver, exhibited at the RA from 1864 to 1905.
Master of Magdalene College, 1713-1740
Born in Walesby, Lincolnshire on 14 February 1682/83. Second son of Henry, Rector of Walesby
School - Lincoln
Admitted sizar (age 16) at Magdalene on 30 March 1699
B.A. 1702/3; M.A. 1706; B.D. 1714; D.D. 1717 (Com. Reg)
Made a Fellow in 1704 and served as Master between 1714 and 1740
Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1715-6
Incorporated at Oxford in 1724
Ordained Deacon at Peterborough on 3 June 1705 and priest, on 9 March 1706/7
Curate of Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, 1707-8
Rector of Ellingham, Norfolk, 1713
Rector of St Augustine, Paul's Gate, London, 1721-30
Chancellor of York, 1722-40
Prebend of Windsor, 1727-40
Vicar of Twickenham, 1730-40
Archdeacon of Middlesex, 1730-40
He was author of many learned works. ‘Few names, recorded in the annals of the Church of England, stand so high in the estimation of its most sound and intelligent members, as that of Dr Waterland… this distinguished writer’ (Van Mildert, William, The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, D. D.: to Which Is Prefixed a Review of the Author's Life and Writings, Volume 1, p.1).
Married Theodosia, daughter of John Tregonwell, of Anderton, Dorset
Died on 23 November 1740 or 23 December 1740. Buried at Windsor
College Magazine
Article: ‘Student counselling, eighteenth-century style’ by Ged Martin, College Magazine, No. 26 (1981-82) pp. 45-49
Article by Eamon Duffy, College Magazine, No. 33 (1988-89) pp. 22-26
Master of Magdalene College 1948-1966
Educated at Trinity College.
MP (National Conservative) for Croydon North, 1940-1948
Minister of Health, 1943-1945
Vice-Chancellor, 1953-1955
Created Baronet 1957, ‘for public services’ – he chaired four Royal commissions or commissions of inquiry between 1951 and 1962
Made an Honorary Fellow on his retirement from the Mastership in 1966
Arms in Hall glass, E3.
College Magazine
Article by F.H.H. Clark, College Magazine, No. 70 (1948) pp. 9-11
Article College Magazine No. 17 (1972-73) pp. 3-13
Article 'Past Master. Sir Henry Willink, 1948-1966' (F. McD C. Turner), College Magazine, No. 44 (1999-2000)
Obituary by R. Hyam College Magazine 1966
A British artist. He was a member of the Royal Academy and well known as a portrait painter in the 1920s and 1930s. Todd was born in Helston in Cornwall. His father, Ralph Todd was a successful artist who taught at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London. The younger Todd received art tuition from Stanhope Forbes in Newlyn before attending the Central School as a student. Todd served in the British Army during the First World War as a driver with the Army Service Corps. After the War, Todd had a picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1918. He enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art and was there throughout 1920 and 1921. When he left the Slade, Todd travelled throughout France, Holland and Italy. Returning to Britain, Todd established himself as a successful artist becoming known for his portraits and his pastel and etching works.
A New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney in 1911, and ultimately to London (1919), where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his satirising of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times.
Matriculated in 1866 and took his degree in Classics in 1870. In 1871 he obtained a second class in the Theological Tripos.
Archdeacon of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, having taken up a post in Grahamstown in 1873; canon of Grahamstown Cathedral, 1899; royal chaplain; on active service during the Boer War. Author of many books including Storm and Sunshine in South Africa: with some Personal and Historical Reminiscences
College Magazine
Obituary: College Magazine, No. 26, December 1917
Could be useful to see if this might be Theodore Blake Wirgman (29 April 1848 – 16 January 1925), although the initial seems wrong.
Although no longer thought to have been educated at Magdalene, he was certainly an important benefactor, building a major part of the west range on First Court, and (together with his wife and daughter) endowing several fellowships and scholarships. He was also a central figure in Elizabethan political history: MP, 1553-1571; Speaker, 1571; Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, 1574-1593, presiding over many state trials, including those of St Edmund Campion and Sir Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel; he also received the submission of the Northern Earls, and acted as an assessor at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots.
Arms in Hall glass, W3. Memorial brass in Chapel.
Visitor of Magdalene College, 1572-1626
Grandson of Lord Audley. Member of St John's College.
Visitor, 1572–1626. Six masters were appointed during his visitorship, but the earlier appointments were made by Lord Burghley while Howard was a minor; however Barnaby Goche, 1640, was his own choice.
Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, 1598–1626.
High Steward and then Chancellor of the University, 1615.
Served as Lord Chamberlain to James I, 1602–1613
Created 1st Earl of Suffolk 1603.
Matriculated at Magdalene College, February 1697/98. Elected as a Fellow in 1700.
Was a benefactor of Magdalene College and his gift met the costs of installing the Pepys Library in 1724 and an annual commemoration.
Tory MP for Cambridge University, 1702, 1705, 1708-10.
Succeeded as 5th Earl of Anglesey and 6th Viscount Valentia in 1710.
Served as the High Steward of the University, 1722-37.
Served as Lord Lieutenant of County Wexford in 1727.
Daughter of the 2nd Viscount Grandison, married Roger Palmer, 1659, later Earl of Castlemaine. Barbara Palmer was one of the loveliest ladies of the Court (so Pepys thought), but she was also one of the most promiscuous. She was mistress to the King, c 1659 to 1670, in which year she had herself created Duchess of Cleveland; she bore the King five children.
Nephew of Samuel Pepys, younger son of Pepys’s sister Paulina (‘Pall’) who married John Jackson, a Huntingdonshire farmer in 1668.
Admitted pensioner aged 14, 28 June 1686 and matriculated in 1687 (BA 1690).
Clerk and amanuensis to Pepys; European tour, 1699-1701, partly to find additions for Pepys’s collection.
Heir to the greater part of Pepys’s wealth, with charge, for his lifetime, of the Library; drew up the final recension of the catalogue and arranged for the reception of the Library in Magdalene, which took place upon his death (hence the date 1724 on the Pepys Building).
Although a prolific portrait engraver over a number of decades, little is known of Robert Cooper. His first recorded work as an engraver was for the Biographical Magazine in 1795. He went on to contribute extensively to the periodical press, producing prints for, among others, La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, the Gentleman's Magazine, European Magazine, Dramatic Magazine, and Evangelical Magazine. The most significant books to feature his work include Cawthorn's Modern British Theatre series, Edmond Lodge's series of Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, Tresham's and Ottley's British Gallery of Pictures (1808), Chamberlaine's edition of Holbein drawings (1812), the Culloden Papers (1815), Memoirs of the Kit-Cat Club (1821), and Colburn's edition of Pepys's Diary (1825). His last recorded engraving dates from 1826, but, according to Samuel Redgrave, he was still living in 1836. He is probably identical with the 'R. Cooper' who exhibited miniature portraits at the Royal Academy between 1793 and 1799.
Educated at the University of Witwatersrand, and University of South Africa (BA); lawyer; President of South Africa, 1994-1999; Nobel (Peace) Laureate, 1993. In 1994 he agreed that the College’s South African postgraduate scholarships (set up by Mr Christopher von Christierson) should be awarded in his name. Elected Honorary Fellow, 2000, and admitted 2 May 2001.
South African painter who has exhibited extensively in South African and abroad specialising in landscapes and portraits (including portraits of Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk and concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz) in a photo-realist style. More recently he describes his work as falling into what he terms a "narrative genre" where paintings are often part of a series (usually three to six) of chronological scenes. He has exhibited at the Slater Memorial Museum (Connecticut) and the Everard Read Gallery (Johannesburg).
Master of Magdalene College, 1986-1994
Educated at King's College Cambridge. Lawyer of the Middle Temple (Bencher, 1981; Master-Treasurer, 1998); QC, 1972; chairman of the Bar, 1984-1985; knighted, 1991.
Member and chairman of numerous legal bodies and committees of inquiry, and author of government papers, eg. Report of the Committee on Privacy (1990) and Review of press self-regulation (1993).
Fellow-Commoner, 1980-1985
Master, 1986-1985
Made an Honorary Fellow on his retirement from the Mastership in 1994.
Married Barbara Walker, 1969; she was a JP and a Freeman of the City of London. Lady Calcutt was a particular supporter of the Magdalene Boat Club.
College Magazine
Article by R.W.M. Dias, College Magazine, No. 29 (1984-85) pp. 3-6
Article, College Magazine, No. 38 (1993-94) p. 4
Article, College Magazine, No. 48 (2003-04) pp. 8-15 (A.D. Rawley, D.J.H. Murphy, Sir D. Oulton)
Son of a Belfast solicitor, educated at Malvern School and University College Oxford
Achieved Firsts in Mods & Greats and English
Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925-1954
Appointed the first Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at Cambridge, and was a Professorial Fellow of Magdalene College, 1954-1963
Made an Honorary Fellow in 1963.
College Magazine
Obituary - College Magazine, vol. 8 (1963-64) pp.13-14
Book review of The Discarded Image, College Magazine, vol. 8 (1963-64) pp.17-21
Article - 'C.S. Lewis: from Magdalen to Magdalene (1954)', by John Constable, College Magazine, vol. 32 (1987-88) pp. 42-46
Article - 'Celebrating C. S. Lewis', by Simon Barrington-Ward, College Magazine, vol. 43 (1998-99) pp. 31-33
Memorial slate in Chapel
Educated at Queens’ College Cambridge (double starred first in History). University Reader in History, Royal Holloway College, London (1942-1968), Professor of History, University of Toronto (1968-1969), Research Fellow of Magdalene College (1970-1972), Official Fellow and Pepys Librarian (1972-1982), Honorary Fellow (1984).
Editor of the definitive edition of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols (1970-1983).
College Magazine
Obituary by R. Luckett, College Magazine, No. 39 (1994-95) pp. 3-6
Seamus Heaney was born at Mossbawn farm, near Castledawson, Co. Derry, Northern Ireland on 13 April 1939. After an education, teaching and lecturing in English in Belfast from the late 1950s through the 1960s, with ‘The Troubles’ he and his family moved to Eire in 1972. He lived in Dublin from 1976 until his death (30 August 2013). His publications include Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), The Haw Lantern (1987) and The Spirit Level (1996). His modern translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, won him a second Whitbread Book of the Year Prize in 2000. Heaney held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1989 until 1994 and Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard from 1985 to 1998. He was selected for numerous awards and honours including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 - 'for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past' - and the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award in 2012.
College Magazine
Obituary by E. Duffy in College Magazine, No. 58, 2013-14 (pp. 11-16)
Carolyn Mulholland was born in 1944 in Lurgan, County Armagh. She attended the Belfast College of Art, and in 1965 was awarded the Ulster Arts Club prize for sculpture.b] A close friend of Seamus Heaney, Mulholland sculpted a portrait bust of Heaney while a student in the 1960s. Mulholland donated a picture to an exhibition to raise funds for victims of civil disturbances in Belfast in the autumn of 1969. The exhibition at Queen's University was organised by Sheelagh Flanagan and showed works by William Scott, Graham Gingles, F E McWilliam, Deborah Brown, Cherith McKinstry, and Mercy Hunter, as well as more than twenty others.The wife of the Northern Irish Secretary of State Colleen Rees was the curator of a personal selection of works from Ulster Artists hosted at the Leeds Playhouse Gallery in 1976. Mulholland's work was among 49 artworks from various artists where she was displayed alongside TP Flanagan, Joe McWilliams, Mercy Hunter, Tom Carr and many others.
Much of Mulholland's sculpture depicts moving abstract figures. In 1973 she was awarded the Royal Ulster Academy Silver Medal Award. In 1974 Mulholland was elected Associate of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts alongside Renée Bickerstaff and Francis Neill. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 1990. She has been exhibited at the Pepper Canister Gallery in Dublin with Basil Blackshaw. In 1992 she won the Irish-American Cultural Institute's O'Malley Award. The Chester Beatty Library holds a portrait by Mulholland of Beatty from 1996, and the Office of Public Works holds her portrait of President Mary McAleese from 2003.
Mulholland has been commissioned to make a number of large and public sculptures, including for the famine memorial graveyard, Clones, County Monaghan in 1998, and in 2003 a bronze panel for the Customs House, Dublin. She has also been commissioned in Northern Ireland, by organisations such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She created the Blitz Memorial for the Northern Ireland War Memorial museum in Belfast.
Educated at Eton and Magdalene College. While still an undergraduate, his show 'Share my lettuce' was performed in the West End (1957-1958); meanwhile he took a double first in the English Tripos. He might have then become a Research Fellow, but instead went to Yale as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow (1958-1959). Author, theatre-critic, broadcaster; and publisher of scholarly editions of nineteenth-century prints; best known as TV presenter of 'University Challenge', 1962-1987. Sandars Reader in Bibliography, Cambridge, 1993-1994. Honorary Fellow, 1996. Co-founder and editor-in-chief of 'www.historyworld.net' (2000).
College Magazine
Obituary by James Raven, College Magazine, No. 66 (2021-22), pp. 20-25
Educated at the Central School (later the Grammar School for Boys, now part of Netherhall School). Apprenticed as a carpenter. For many years he worked in the College while employed by the local builders Nunn, acquiring an unrivalled knowledge of the College buildings and infrastructure from 1958, before formally being employed by the College Maintenance Department from 1971, where he remained (long after the retiring age) part-time from 1978 until 1991, at one time acting as Clerk of Works.
He brought ingenuity and dexterity to the solution of a variety of problems throughout this time.
College Magazine
Obituay in College Magazine vol. 43 (1998-99) p. 24
Matriculated in 1795; Fellow, 1802-1818.
Arms in Hall glass, W2.
An English etcher, aquatint and stipple engraver, landscape and portrait painter and the brother of Charles Lewis (1786–1836).
Lewis was a famous engraver, one of a family dynasty of artists, 'one of the most prolific, skilled and versatile print-makers of his time' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
Matriculated from Magdalene in 1913. Made a Fellow in 1920; Appointed Pepys Librarian, 1920-1926, Life Fellow, 1963.
Librarian of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, 1926–1958, and Deputy Keeper of the Royal Archives from 1930.
Author of Everybody's Pepys (1926).
Obituary in the College Magazine, vol. 21, 1976-77, pp. 8-10
See also: the College Magazine vol. 56, 2011-12), pp. 60-63, 'Morshead and Kelly' by R. Luckett.
A well-to-do Huntingdon attorney, descended from John Ferrar (1588–1657), merchant and politician. He married Love Beverley; their eldest daughter Martha married Peter Peckard. He was the custodian of the family papers, which he left to his son-in-law (now the Ferrar Papers in the Old Library, Magdalene College).
George Finch was a member of the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition. He was a proponent of the use of oxygen at high-altitude, a controversial topic at the time.
George Finch was born on 4 August 1888, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Charles Edward Finch, farmer and land court judge, and his wife, Laura. From an early age he was a keen explorer of the local countryside; it was a view of Orange, from a nearby hill, that inspired his desire to see the world from the tops of mountains. In 1902 the family moved to England as his father thought that a British education would benefit his sons. However, the discipline of public schools was incompatible with his desire to instil in them independence and self-reliance. It was agreed that Laura Finch would oversee the boys' private tuition in Europe, while their father returned to Australia to manage the family property.
In 1905 Finch entered the École de Médecine, Paris, but soon decided the subject was not to his liking. From 1907 he studied physical sciences at Zürich Polytechnic, graduating DTechChem in 1911. While in Switzerland he spent much time climbing in the Alps with his younger brother Maxwell, who was also studying in Zürich. George Finch was regarded locally as a very talented climber.
Finch moved to England in 1912; he worked briefly at the Royal Arsenal but the following year was appointed demonstrator in the newly formed fuel department at Imperial College.
During the First World War he served in France and in Salonika, where he developed an aerial mine to combat enemy spotter aircraft. He was mentioned in dispatches and appointed MBE. While on leave, on 16 June 1915 he married Alicia Gladys but the marriage was short and unhappy, ending in divorce about 1919.
After the war Finch returned to Imperial College. On 28 December 1921 he married Agnes Isobel Johnston. In the same year Finch was appointed a lecturer in electrochemistry. He became professor of applied physical chemistry in 1936. In 1952 he was appointed director of the National Chemical Laboratory in Poona, India. He retired in 1957, returning to England.
Throughout the 1920s Finch was an active mountaineer. Though his Australian unorthodoxy did not go down well with the climbing establishment he was selected for the 1922 British attempt on Everest. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of oxygen. With George Mallory he reached 27,235 ft, at that time a record altitude, and the following year he was the first to climb the north face of the Dent d'Herens in the Swiss Alps. Yet, despite his achievements, he was excluded from the 1924 Everest team.
In 1929 he founded the Imperial College Mountaineering Club, but following a gastric illness and the death of three club members on the Jungfrau in 1931, he gave up climbing himself. Many years later, in 1959, he was elected president of the Alpine Club.
During his subsequent career Finch received many honours. He was elected FRS in 1938, and awarded the society's Hughes medal in 1944. He was president of the Physical Society in 1947–9 and Guthrie lecturer in 1950. He was appointed commander of the Belgian order of Leopold II in 1938, and made a chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur in 1952. A keen sailor from the time he had given up mountaineering, he moved in his last years to The Grange, East Hanney, Berkshire, where he died on 22 November 1970, survived by his wife.