cartographer and painter. Brother of engraver Johann Gottlieb Facius. The Facius brothers were born in Regensburg (Germany) and received engraving training in Brussels. By 1776, their works were already well known and they moved to London at the invitation of John Boydell, with whom they worked for many years.
Educated at Jesus College, of which he was a Fellow, 1920-1922, before appointment as Director of Studies in Natural Sciences at Magdalene in 1922. In 1931 he left to become Professor of Geology at University College, London, returning to Cambridge and Magdalene as Woodwardian Professor of Geology, 1943-1955. Meanwhile, his knowledge of coastline and water supply were invaluable in planning the Normandy landings during the Second World War.
An English painter specialising in portraits. He was a Royal Academician for almost fifty years, and painted many of the most notable figures of his time.
A Netherlandish portrait painter, much in demand by the courts of Europe. He has also been referred to as Antoon, Anthonius, Anthonis or Mor van Dashorst, and as Antonio Moro, António Mouro, Anthony More, etc., but signed most of his portraits as Anthonis Mor
Sister of Lord Howard de Walden, the first Lord Braybrooke, married the Revd Dr William Parker DD, FRS (1714 -1802), Rector of St James’s, Westminster, and curate of Catharine Cree Church, eminent preacher, royal chaplain and chaplain to the Bishop of London . Mary succeeded to the family estates on the death of her brother in 1797, so she and her husband had a life interest in Audley End, and as ‘owners’ under the old Statutes (an arrangement which lasted until 1926, when the right was vested in the Braybrooke family, not the ownership of Audley End), they jointly signed the patent for the presentation of William Gretton to the mastership in 1797; however, they did not reside at Audley End.
Matriculated at Magdalene College in 1890. One of the first men to take the Mechanical Sciences Tripos. After working on Parsons steam turbines, and teaching at the Leys School, he returned to the Engineering Department in 1898, where he continued to lecture until 1937, on mechanics and thermodynamics.
Made a Fellow at Magdalene in 1909; Steward, 1912-1913, 1942-1945; Bursar, 1913-1937, 1943-1947. He was brought out of retirement to fill the gap left by the departure of his successor.
Further reading:
Article: 'Mr Talbot Peel, 1872-1954', College Magazine, No. 85 (1954) pp. 21-23
Matriculated from Magdalene College in 1839. He was directly descended through his mother from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s sister.
Rowed in the Blue Boat, 1840, 1841, 1842.
‘Architect, archaeologist and astronomer’, surveyor of the fabric of St Paul’s Cathedral (1852-1897), he is chiefly remembered as an architectural historian. His famous work Principles of Athenian Architecture (1851, 1888, 1973) demonstrated that there were no straight lines in the Parthenon (entasis of the columns).
One of the first Honorary Fellows, 1885.
President of the RIBA, 1894-1896, and first director of the British School at Athens.
For Magdalene he undertook the restoration of the Street Front and laid out River Court (he designed the gates); part of the Chapel Court in St John’s is also his work.
Further reading:
Article: 'Unbuilt Magdalene I Penrose's Plan for Second Court (1872-73)', College Magazine, No. 30, (1985-86), pp. 21-24 (R. Hyam)
Great uncle of Samuel Pepys, and patriarch of the family.
Talbot Pepys was the youngest son of John Pepys of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire and his wife Edith Talbot. He was baptised at Impington on 2 April 1583. He inherited the site of his father's mansion at Impington when he was six years old in 1589.
He matriculated from King's College, Cambridge in 1595 and became a scholar of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1601. He was admitted at Middle Temple on 13 May 1605 and was called to the bar in 1613. Between 1624 and 1660 he served as Recorder of Cambridge.
In 1625 he was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge. He was Reader of Middle Temple in 1631 and Treasurer in 1640. He was often visited by his great nephew Samuel Pepys.
Pepys married firstly, Beatrice Castell, daughter of John Castell of Raveningham, Norfolk on 3 August 1617. They had five children. After Beatrice's death he married Paulina, who died in 1626. He married his third wife Mary Tesmond not long after Paulina's death. His last wife was Mary Barker.
Talbot Pepys died at the age of 82 at Impington.
A Scottish landscape and portrait painter. Gunn's paintings are on show in a number of galleries and his 1953 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is in the Royal Collection. He also painted notable portraits of King George V, Agnes Catherine Maitland (now in Somerville College's dining hall), and also of Harold Macmillan, in his role as Chancellor of Oxford University. He was elected President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1953, a post he held until his death.
Painter, draughtsman, writer and aesthete, born in Southport, Lancashire. From 1908-11 he read history at Cambridge University, then in Paris, after studying etching, pursued painting with Percyval Tudor-Hart before going to Munich. During World War I he was in the army and Royal Flying Corps, later working on battleship camouflage. Among Wood's writings after World War I were The Foundations of Aesthetics, written with C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. He also wrote on colour harmony, a favourite topic, and in 1926 published New World Vistas, an autobiographical work. From the 1930s Wood became increasingly fascinated by Persian Art; he learn Persian and subsequently became art adviser to the Persian government. His own paintings were influenced by Kandinsky, and he showed at Leicester and Zwemmer Galleries in solo exhibitions. After 1955 he rarely exhibited, but painted several portraits of Cambridge Academics. Throughout the war years Wood lived in a remote cottage above Llantony, Monmouthshire. After the war he lived mainly in his Hampstead house, where his studio was situated, though spent some of his time in his wife’s house in rural Gloucestershire with occasional visits to Llantony. Wood was married to a painter, Elisabeth Robertson, who had previously been the wife of the artist and writer Humphrey Slater. In 1980 Blond Fine Art held a retrospective.
Trained at the Welsh School of Architecture. In 1937 appointed to an assistant lectureship at King’s College, Newcastle, where he was influenced by L. C. Evetts, the authority on Roman lettering. University lecturer in Architecture, 1946-1978, with architectural commissions in Magdalene, 1953-1971. Made a Fellow in 1958. He designed more buildings in Cambridge than any other architect in history, but was also in demand for student accommodation at Oxford, Durham, Bangor, Liverpool and Sheffield. He was expert at the conversion of old buildings. Famous for personal charm and a hooting laugh.
Obituary: College Magazine, No. 27 (1982-83), pp. 1-6
An American photographer, known for portraits of celebrities, politicians, presidents and other prominent individuals. He was professionally known as Fabian. Bachrach was best known for a portrait of Senator John F. Kennedy, which was later used as his official photograph after he was elected President in 1960.
Educated King's School Worcester. Matriculated in 1964 (Scholar). PhD 1975, Fellow 1968, Tutor 1984–1993. University Lecturer 1974, Reader 1993–2000, Professor of German Literature & Intellectual History 2000, Schröder Professor of German 2006. W. Heinemann Prize, RSL, 1992; Goethe Medal 2000, Gundolf Prize 2009; Corresponding Fellow, Göttingen Academy of Sciences, 2010. Recreation: 'enjoying other people's gardens'.
Educated at St Philip's Grammar School Birmingham, University of Hull, Selwyn College (PhD 1972). Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History, King's College London 1974–1979. University Lecturer in Divinity Faculty, Cambridge 1979–1994, Reader 1994, Professor of the History of Christianity 2003. Hawthornden Prize for Literature 2002.
Fellow 1979 (Director of Studies in History and in Theology; Tutor), President 2001–2006.
Member of the Pontifical Historical Commission 2001; President of the Ecclesiastical History Society 2004–2005; Hon Member of the Irish Royal Academy, 2012.
College Magazine
Article, College Magazine, vol. 45 (2000–01) p. 21
Educated at Royal Liberty School Romford. Matric 1954 (Scholar); PhD 1962, ScD 1995; Bye-Fellow, 1958–1960; Fellow, 1960 (Emeritus 2002); Tutor, 1963–1974; joint Director of Studies in Natural Sciences (Biological), 1980–1996; President, 1991–1996 (Acting Master , Michaelmas Term 1994). University Lecturer in Botany, 1964-1992; Reader, 1992-2000; Professor of Investigative Plant Ecology, 2000 (Emeritus 2002). President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1990-1991; Editor, Journal of Ecology, 1972-1977; President of the British Ecological Society, 1990-1991 (first Award for outstanding service to the Society, 2003).
Educated at Pembroke College. Lecturer in Natural Sciences at Magdalene, and University Demonstrator in Chemistry, from 1931. Made a Fellow in 1938.
Research on chemical warfare during the war, working on various ‘ nerve gases’; and after the war a regional scientific adviser on Civil Defence.
Director of Studies in Natural Sciences and Medicine, 1931-1973. Praelector or Deputy Praelector, 1949-1978. President, 1967-1973. Senior Proctor, 1943-1944.
In his honour rice pudding can always be requested at Magdalene as it was the only thing he could stomach after his wartime experiments.
Further reading:
Obituary: College Magazine No. 28 (1983–84) pp. 1-3 (P. J. Grubb)
Article: 'The Chemistry of B. C. Saunders', College Magazine, No. 56 (2011–12), p. 64-68
Relative of John Drinkwater, biographer of Samuel Pepys.
Matriculated in 1927.
Fairfax Scott got him involved in the Cambridge University Press, where he learned typography, and from there he studied lettering (very briefly) with Eric Gill. During the war he worked on aerial photographic interpretation, making a major contribution to the war effort. He was a consummate designer of book-plates, but also designed royal arms, and for The Times and the Bank of England. In Magdalene he designed the 1939-1945 War Memorial (cut by his cousin Will Carter). Made an Honorary Fellow in 1978.
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.
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
Obituary by R. Hyam College Magazine 1966
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.
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.
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).
Capt. John B. L. Noel was a member of the 1922 and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions, serving as photographer and filmmaker.
John Noel was born on 26 February 1890 at Newton Abbot, Devon, the third and youngest son of Colonel the Hon. Edward Noel (1852–1917) and his wife, Ruth Lucas (d. 1926). He was baptised Baptist Lucius and added the name John by deed poll in 1908. His father, the younger son of the 2nd Earl of Gainsborough, was a prominent soldier and military historian. Noel was educated at Lausanne, Switzerland, but often missed classes to visit the mountains. His mother was an artist and encouraged him to study painting in Florence. His father's influence prevailed and he attended Sandhurst, though he passed into the regular army, not the Indian army, to his father's disappointment. In 1909 he was commissioned as Second Lieutenant, and applied to join the East Yorkshire regiment since it was stationed in northern India.
Noel's regiment spent summers in the hills of the Himalayas and he spent his leave plotting routes through the forests of Sikkim towards Tibet. After being promoted to Lieutenant in 1912, he took his leave in 1913 and travelled in disguise and without permission across an unguarded pass into Tibet with three Himalayan guides. Tibetan authorities forced Noel to turn back when he got within 40 miles of Mount Everest.
When war started in 1914, Noel was on leave in Britain and joined the King's own Yorkshire Light Infantry, as his own regiment was still in India. During the retreat from Mons he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He escaped and made his way through enemy lines, travelling at night by the stars. He rejoined his regiment at Ypres and was promoted to Captain in 1915, the year of his marriage to Sybil Graham (d. 1939), an actress whom he had met in Kashmir. In 1917 he became an instructor in the machine-gun corps and was temporary a Major from 1918 to 1920. From 1920 he served as revolver instructor at the small arms school at Hythe, Kent, and wrote several pamphlets on revolvers and automatic pistols, as well as publishing, jointly with his wife, a collection of cooking recipes for soldiers.
In 1919 Noel gave a lecture on his pre-war travels in Tibet at the Royal Geographical Society. Sir Francis Younghusband orchestrated the press coverage of Noel's paper to generate interest in a British expedition to climb Everest. Noel was invited to join the second Everest expedition in 1922 by its leader, and his cousin, General Charles Bruce as photographer and film-maker. He had been interested in cinematography since the age of fourteen, when he saw Herbert Ponting's Antarctic film sixteen times. The army would not grant him leave for the Everest expedition in 1922 so he retired and was granted the rank of Major.
Noel made a silent film called 'Climbing Mt. Everest' (1922) which portrays the manners and customs of Tibet as well as the ascent of the mountain. Noel's technical achievements—filming with a Newman Sinclair camera at 23,000 feet and developing film under harsh conditions in a tent at 16,000 feet—were overshadowed by the expedition's failure to reach the summit.
In 1924 Noel formed Explorer Films Ltd, with Younghusband as Chairman, and paid £8,000 for the film and photographic rights to Everest. He posted letters from Tibet with his own Everest stamp, and sent his film to Darjeeling for developing by Arthur Pereira, who in turn sent extracts to Pathé news. Noel also made innovative use of telephoto lenses and time-lapse film techniques. His silent film 'The Epic of Everest' (1924) contrasted the masculine climbers with the mystical Tibetans, and suggested that spiritual forces on Mount Everest might be responsible for the disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. Noel exhibited his film in London with dances by a group of monks from the Tibetan Buddhist monastery at Gyantse. Officials in Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan were offended by certain scenes in the film and by the performances of the monks, who had not been given permission to leave Tibet. The Dalai Lama saw pictures of the monks in newspapers and said he considered 'the whole affair as a direct affront to the religion of which he is the head' (Hansen, 737). The controversy over the 'dancing lamas' led to the cancellation of future Everest expeditions and a chill in Anglo-Tibetan relations, and Noel became persona non grata among British diplomats, geographers, and mountaineers for almost thirty years.
Noel's American lecture tour enjoyed great success, as did the American edition of his book Through Tibet to Everest (1927; repr., 1931, 1989), which was not as well promoted in Britain. His wife also published Magic Bird of Chomolungma (1931), about Tibetan folk-tales she had collected in Tibet in 1924. British diplomats curtly rebuffed Noel's attempts to organize Himalayan expeditions in the 1930s. He filled out an application to become a naturalized American citizen, but the paperwork was misplaced.
Noel was Roman Catholic, and one of his uncles was private secretary to several popes. Pope Pius XI, who was also a climber, sent his blessings to Noel's Everest endeavours and invited him to the canonization of St Bernadette at St Peter's in Rome in 1933. Noel surreptitiously shot the only photographs of the ceremony, with a camera disguised as a prayer book. He occasionally lectured on St Bernadette's story, and his photographs of the canonization were later given to the Society of Our Lady of Lourdes.
After his first wife died in 1939, Noel married Mary Sullivan (d. 1984) on 17 November 1941. During 1941–3 he joined the intelligence corps and was restored to the rank of Captain. He worked out the best supply-route from India to Burma, and it was briefly known as the Noel Road before being renamed the Stilwell Road. In 1944 he moved to Smarden, Kent, and restored several old homes.
After the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Noel began to give mountaineering lectures again with his films and hand-coloured photographs. Younger climbers and film-makers often visited him at Romney Marsh, Kent, to hear his eyewitness account of the disappearance of Mallory and Irvine. Footage from his Everest films appeared in many subsequent mountaineering films and television programmes. Noel's version of events also strongly influenced histories of the Everest expeditions written during this period.
Noel was known for his showmanship, mischievous humour, and an imperious demeanour. He died of pneumonia in 1989.
Friend of George Mallory.
Born in Cambridge on 25 March 1887, son of (John) Neville Keynes (1852–1949), lecturer in moral science and later university registrary, and his wife, Florence Ada (1861–1958). His brother was John Maynard Keynes.
He was educated from 1901 at Rugby School, before going to Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1906 (of which he was made an honorary fellow in 1965), to study natural sciences, in which he received a first class (part one, 1909). He graduated MA (1913), BChir (1914), and MD (1918). He also became FRCS (1920), FRCP (1953), FRCOG (1950), and FRCS (Canada, 1956).
On 12 May 1917 he married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, the daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin and granddaughter of Charles Darwin. They had one daughter, who died in infancy, and four sons.
Mentioned by George Mallory in a letter to his wife Ruth.
Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925), politician, traveller, and viceroy of India, was born on 11 January 1859 at Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, the second of the eleven children of the Revd Alfred Nathaniel Holden Curzon, fourth Baron Scarsdale (1831–1916), rector of Kedleston, and his wife, Blanche (1837–1875), daughter of Joseph Pocklington Senhouse of Netherhall in Cumberland. His family was of Norman ancestry and had lived on the same site since the twelfth century. In 1759 Sir Nathaniel Curzon, later first Baron Scarsdale, demolished the existing house at Kedleston and commissioned Robert Adam to build him a great country house in the Palladian style. His descendant, George Nathaniel, was always conscious, however, that the family home was more distinguished than the family which inhabited it, and from an early age he was determined to prove himself a fitting master for Kedleston. In the closing words of the epitaph he composed for himself, 'he sought to serve his country and add honour to an ancient name'.
A French psychoanalyst and pacifist. His psychoanalytical work combined Freudianism with elements of the thought of Carl Jung and Alfred Adler.