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A noted portrait painter, including royalty. Born John Helier Lander, he added the St. to acknowledge his birthplace of Saint Helier in the Channel Islands. He was given his first paint box by Lillie Langtry, the famous beauty, actress and mistress of the Prince of Wales, later to become Edward VII. He studied at Calderon's School.

Educated at Merton College, Oxford, and Harvard University. Poet and critic. Director of Faber & Faber. Elected Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College in 1939. Nobel Laureate, 1948. He bequeathed to the College the manuscripts of The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding.

Article: 'T.S. Eliot and Magdalene' by R.D. Williams, College Magazine No. 60 (2015-16)

A British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST, the literary magazine of the Vorticists.

Lewis was educated in England at Rugby School and then Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. He spent most of the 1900s travelling around Europe and studying art in Paris. While in Paris, he attended lectures by Henri Bergson on process philosophy.

His novels include Tarr (1918) and The Human Age trilogy, composed The Childermass (1928), Monstre Gai (1955) and Malign Fiesta (1955). A fourth volume, titled The Trial of Man, was unfinished at the time of his death. He also wrote two autobiographical volumes: Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) and Rude Assignment: A Narrative of my Career Up-to-Date (1950).

An English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of St Trinian's School and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.

Matriculated in 1774; Senior Wrangler in 1778 aged 19

Made a Fellow in 1778
Appointed Tutor in 1782
Appointed Professor of Chemistry in 1794
President of the College in 1798
1813-1837 Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy

In 1800 he resigned his Tutorship (but not his University Professorship) and became Vicar of St Giles's parish in Cambridge. He had no previous experience of parochial work. By 1817 he had built two schoolrooms - one for 400 boys and one for 300 girls, and had englarged the church from his private benevolence.
In 1836 he became Rector of Little Stonham in Suffolk where he died on 12 January 1837.

A skilled engineering model-maker, he foresaw the time when steam would be the main power for travel by land and sea, and he predicted that the technology would one day be found to travel through the air. He was also an influential pioneer and agitator against the slave trade and played a leading part in the related inauguration of the Protestant missionary movement. Marsden, Brown, Robert Grant and Lord Glenelg were among his protégés.

Articles in the College Magazine:
Article: 'William Farish, 1759-1837', by Charles Smyth, College Magazine, No. 76, December 1937
Article, ''William Farish, 1759-1837', by Dr K. R. Webb, College Magazine, No. 86, Michaelmas 1955

An English engraver and subject painter, the brother of the artist George Dawe. Dawe was born at Kentish Town, near London, in 1790. He was taught by his father, Philip Dawe, the engraver, and he also studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. He assisted Turner on his Liber Studiorum, and mezzotinted many of his brother's portraits. As a painter, he exhibited at the Society of British Artists, of which he was elected a member in 1830. He died at Windsor in 1848.

Lt. Col. Charles K. Howard-Bury, Leader of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.

Born at Charleville Castle, King's County, Ireland, the only son of Captain Kenneth Howard-Bury (1846–1885) and Lady Emily Alfreda Julia, daughter of Charles Bury, 3rd Earl of Charleville. He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

He was interested in climbing in his youth and climbed the larger routes in the Austrian Alps. In 1904 he joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was posted to India, where he went travelling and big game-hunting. At the beginning of World War I he rejoined his regiment and served with distinction as a frontline officer on the Somme and throughout the conflict. He was captured during the German Spring Offensive of 1918, and then made a dramatic escape from his prisoner-of-war camp, before being recaptured ten days later.

In 1921 he became the leader of the first Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition which was organised and financed by the Mount Everest Committee (a joint body of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society). In 1922 he wrote a full account of the expedition, published as Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921. In 1922 he was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his leadership of the expedition.

Guy Bullock was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.

As expedition mountaineers, Guy Bullock and George Mallory found a northern access route to Everest by climbing the 6,849-metre (22,470 ft) Lhakpa La col above the East Rongbuk Glacier and by going on to reach the North Col at 7,020 metres (23,030 ft). They did not, however, reach the summit of Mount Everest.

Shortly before the 1921 Everest expedition was due to embark, one of the climbing team was asked to drop out (Finch) and Mallory suggested Bullock as a replacement. The Foreign Office rejected Younghusband's request to grant leave to Bullock, who was in Lima at the time, to join the expedition but he gained a special dispensation from the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, so he could have leave on half pay until the end of 1921 but with no chance of this being renewed.  Bullock and his wife sailed for Bombay on the SS Naldera, arriving on 30 April 1921. The expedition had a climbing team of four but, of the two most experienced members, one died doing the march-in (Kellas) and the other was taken ill (Raeburn). This left only two main climbers, Mallory and Bullock. Bullock was a well-organised person, able to get on well with almost everybody. He was steady and cheerful, and so was a very good companion for Mallory (the better climber). Bullock was reunited with his wife at Lachen in the Teesta valley in Sikkim on 8 October and they eventually sailed home from Bombay.

Bullock's diary of the expedition was published in 1962 in the Alpine Journal. Bullock had previously declined to lend the diary to Mallory who had been wanting to make use of it for his lectures after the expedition.

He died in a London hospital in 1956.

Dr Alexander Kellas was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition. He died en route to Mount Everest.

Kellas was born on 21 June 1868 in Aberdeen, the son of James Fowler Kellas, secretary to the local marine board, and his wife, Mary Boyd. He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school and then attended Aberdeen University, Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh, and Heidelberg University, where he gained a PhD. He was keenly interested in chemistry and even more enthusiastic for mountaineering. The two interests combined to make him pre-eminent for a time in the field of high-altitude physiology. He was able to combine research at low pressure in the laboratory with practical studies at altitude in the Himalayas.

Kellas had a great love for wild mountain places. He was not given to technical climbing but was supremely interested in mountain geography and exploration, in the course of which he reached numerous unclimbed Himalayan summits. He began mountaineering in the Cairngorms while a student at Aberdeen University.

In his late thirties Kellas made his first visit to the Himalayas. He made six expeditions to Sikkim from 1907 to 1920. He did a phenomenal amount of climbing and yet very little is known about him because he was of a retiring nature and wrote very little of his achievements. Unusual in that he generally climbed without European companions, he was accompanied by an ever loyal group of local porters whom he trained in the basic alpine skills. He possessed phenomenal energy and tenacity.

During the First World War, Kellas channelled his energies into high-altitude research and the effect of diminished atmospheric pressure on human physiology, a subject of great importance to the Air Ministry.

In 1919 Kellas suffered a breakdown in health from overwork, resigned his lectureship in London, and returned to Aberdeen. He recovered the following year and set out again for the Himalayas to carry out more experiments at altitude on himself and his high-altitude porters. He reached a height of 23,622 ft on Kamet. After several months in the Garhwal he travelled over to Sikkim, where in November 1920 he climbed north of the Kang La to obtain photographs of the peaks north of Everest that were then unknown.

Kellas returned to the Kang La region in April 1921 and climbed a higher peak to see more of Everest's north side. He then climbed Narsingh (19,110 ft) before turning his attention to working out a way through the icefall on Kabru. He had time to reach only 21,000 ft. He returned to Darjeeling just one week before he was to join the first expedition to Mount Everest, led by Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury.

Kellas was chosen to be a member of the climbing team of four at the age of 53. He had far more experience of high-altitude climbing than any contemporary. He had alone built up a good rapport with the Sherpa Bhotias hill men and, by emphasising the importance of adequate training and of treating them with respect, had shown their value to any mountaineering enterprise.

After only a week of rest from his attempts to see more of the Everest region and his prolonged work on Kabru, Kellas had no time to recuperate properly for the rigours of the Tibetan plateau. He went down with dysentery and had to be carried on a stretcher. Just before Kampa Dzong the accumulated strain of his spring climbing, the biting cold of the plateau, and rampant dysentery overtaxed his heart. He died, on 5 June 1921, among his faithful porters, as he had insisted his countrymen went on ahead.

Kellas was buried on a hillside to the south of Kampa Dzong in sight of the peaks of Sikkim, where he had made so many first ascents.

In 1919 Sir Francis Younghusband was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee which was set up to coordinate the initial 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest. He actively encouraged George Mallory to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest. Younghusband remained Chairman through the subsequent 1922 and 1924 British Expeditions.

Born on 21 July 1865 in Edinburgh, the fourth son of William Raeburn, a brewer, and his wife, Jessie, née Ramsay. In 1896 Raeburn joined the Scottish Mountaineering Club, which had been founded in 1889, and within a few years he became its leading climber, recording many classic routes throughout Scotland. He climbed further afield too including the first British guideless ascent of the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn in 1906, as well as first ascents in Norway and the Caucasus. In 1904 he joined the Alpine Club (London).

Raeburn was vice-president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club from 1909 to 1911, but later turned down the presidency.

1921 he was appointed lead climber on the the First Everest expedition. By the time the expedition reached Tibet, dysentery had broken out. One member of the party, Alexander Mitchell Kellas, died, and Raeburn himself had to be carried down and spent two months in hospital. Against common sense he returned to the expedition, but he was exhausted and never really recovered. Declining health eventually led to his death five years later. He died, unmarried, at Craig House, Edinburgh, on 21 December 1926.

Mary Ferrar (née Wodenoth) was the wife of Nicholas Ferrar the Elder, by whom she had six children. In 1624 she purchased land at Little Gidding, where the family established the Little Gidding community and made it their permanent home two years later.

English painter of portraits of Dutch or Flemish parentage. He was active in England, from at least 1618 to 1643, when he moved to Middelburg in the Netherlands to escape the English Civil War. Between 1646 and 1652 he lived in Amsterdam, before settling in Utrecht, where he died. Johnson painted many portraits of emerging new English gentry. His early portraits were panel paintings with "fictive" oval frames. His works can be found in major collections in the UK and overseas as well as in private collections in stately homes in Britain. He was an accomplished portrait painter, but lacked the flair of a master such as Van Dyck.

Nicholas Ferrar was a merchant in London. He is the most senior figure in the line of the Ferrar family whose papers were left to Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Educated at Clare Hall/College; Fellow of Clare. From 1618 to 1624 he was director to the affairs of the Virginia Company. Ferrar was ordained as a deacon in 1626 and founded the small Anglican community of Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, shortly after his mother Mary Ferrar purchased the land there in 1624.

Appointed College Porter in 1872 (with a salary of £100 pa, plus grass fines and half the gate fines, and increased by £10 pa in 1876), though he had already been employed by the College for many years, as he was given a gratuity of £15 in 1869, in consideration of long service (B/441, pp 221, 228, 232, 240). Fleet probably died in office in 1885, when James Stearn was appointed Head Porter.

Portrait of George Fleet MCWA/A/50

Born in Horsted Keynes, Sussex, England
1861 census - living on Histon Road with his wife Emma (aged 44), daughter Emma (aged 9) and sons Harry (aged 7) and George (aged 5)
1871 census - living at 11 Pleasant Row with his daughter Emma and sons Harry (cabinet maker) and George
1881 census living in Magdalene College. Widower

Son of John Verrall of Southover, Lewes, Sussex. Privately educated.
Admitted pensioner, Magdalene College in 1880 aged 23.

Matric 1926. Despite six generations of engineers behind him (Garrett Engines of Leiston, Suffolk), he took up Botany, and married Jane Perkins from the rival firm in Peterborough. After research work in Adelaide, London and Rothamsted, Berks, he returned to Cambridge in 1949, becoming Reader in Mycology in 1961 and Professor in 1971. He became a Fellow in 1962, one of two elections (the other was Dr R.V. Short in Physiology) made to meet the recommendations of the Bridges Report about increasing the number of College fellowships for those with University posts. Garrett was an adventurous eater of fungus species, but never made a mistake.

Obituary: College Magazine, No. 34 (1989-90)

Stephen Gaselee was born in Brunswick Gardens, Kensington, London, the elder son of Henry Gaselee (1842–1926), fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and his wife, Alice Esther. His great-grandfather was Sir Stephen Gaselee, justice of the court of common pleas.

He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge (matriculated 1901). He obtained a first class in part 1 of the classical tripos (1904) and a second class in part 2 (1905). He left Cambridge in that year and, as tutor to Prince Leopold of Battenberg (later Lord Leopold Mountbatten) and travelled widely. He returned to Cambridge in 1907 and was editor of the Cambridge Review.

Between 1908 and 1919 he was Pepys librarian at Magdalene College, and became a Fellow in 1909 (which he held for 4 years).

In 1916 Gaselee entered the Foreign Office and was rewarded for this war service in 1918 by appointment as CBE. By Michaelmas term 1919 he was back in Cambridge.
On 1 January 1920 he was made librarian and keeper of the papers at the Foreign Office. He was appointed KCMG in 1935, and served the crown until his death.

In 1917 he married May Evely. They had three daughters.

He had a large number of interests he was a Latinist, Coptologist, medievalist, palaeographer, liturgiologist, and hagiographer. In 1932 he was president of the Bibliographical Society and from 1928 honorary librarian of the Athenaeum.

In 1934 he presented to the Cambridge University Library 300 early printed books, to which he subsequently added his rare and large collection of early sixteenth-century books and his Petroniana.

He died at his home in London on 16 June 1943.

Arms in Hall glass, W1.

Dr Alexander 'Sandy' Wollaston was the Medical Officer and Naturalist of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition. He was killed by a student in Cambridge in 1930.

Sandy Wollaston was an English medical doctor, ornithologist, botanist, climber and explorer and part of the 1921 Expedition to Everest. After qualifying as a surgeon in 1903, Wollaston decided to spend his life on exploration and natural history, travelling extensively; he wrote books about his travels and work, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1907. He took up an offer from John Maynard Keynes to be a tutor at Cambridge. He was shot dead by Douglas Potts, a deranged undergraduate student, in Cambridge in 1930.

Brigadier Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler was a Canadian surveyor, mountain climber and soldier. Wheeler participated in the first expedition to Mount Everest in 1921. He was an accomplished mountain climber and on the 1921 expedition was one of the team to reach the 7000 metre North Col. As a Brigadier in the British Army he was appointed Surveyor General of India in 1941. He was knighted for the work he did surveying India.

Member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest Expeditions.

Henry Morshead was born in 1882 and brought up near Tavistock. He was the eldest son of Reginald Morshead, a banker, and Ella Mary Morshead. He was educated at Winchester College. In 1901 (at the second attempt) he passed the exams to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to become an officer in the Royal Engineers. At the Chatham Royal School of Military Engineering he had such a distinguished record that in 1904 he was posted to the Indian Army in the Royal Engineers' Military Works Services at Agra.

In 1906 he joined the Survey of India where, apart from his service in the First World War, he remained with the Survey until his death. He became knowledgeable in the history of Himalayan exploration, particularly in Tibet and distinguished himself on several arduous winter Himalayan expeditions.

In 1920 he accompanied Alexander Kellas in an attempt to climb the 25,447 ft (7,756 m) Kamet.

On the 1921 British reconnaissance expedition, Morshead led the Survey of India team which mapped 12,000 square miles (31,000 km2) of entirely unexplored country. During this expedition he climbed Kama Changri at 21,300 ft (6,500 m) and with George Mallory was the first to establish the camp on the 22,350 ft (6,810 m) Lhakpa La.

In the 1922 expedition, Morshead was a member of the Everest climbing party itself but because he had only been allowed leave at the last minute his expedition clothing had to be bought at Darjeeling bazaar and it was inadequate. On 20 May 1922 with Mallory, Howard Somervell and Teddy Norton, Morshead was in the first assault team, which attempted reaching the summit without oxygen. As the party left the North Col to head up towards the north east ridge, Norton's rucksack fell down to the glacier and this reduced the overnight clothing for camp V at 25,000 ft (7,600 m). The camp was at a higher altitude that anyone had ever been before. The next morning another rucksack was let slip but Morshead climbed down 100 ft (30 m) to recover it. However, on resuming the climb Morshead was almost immediately unable to continue and so went down to camp V while the other three continued. The team reached 26,985 ft (8,225 m) before turning back.

They joined Morshead at camp V who by then was very cold and all four immediately went down to camp IV on the North Col. On the way Morshead slipped and dragged two other men down the couloir. Mallory managed to stop the fall and saved everyone's lives. They reached camp at 23:30 but a logistical error had meant that the stove and fuel had been taken to a lower camp so there was no liquid water and no edible food. After surviving the night on the Col they descended to the glacier the next day but by then Somervell thought that Morshead was "not far from death". Norton, the expedition leader, wrote of him, "he kept going doggedly without complaint and in spite of a bad fall on an ice slope, knowing that the safety of the whole party depended on his determination to 'stay the course'". Morshead had severe frostbite to his hands and a foot and later three finger joints had to be amputated. However, at the time he hid the pain of his injuries from his colleagues.

For the 1924 Everest expedition Morshead was not considered able to participate as a climber because of his injuries but he was offered the role of base camp and transport officer. He had to turn this down because his employers would not give permission, even for unpaid leave. However, in the 1924 Olympic Games medals were awarded for mountaineering and Morshead received a special medal awarded to the climbers on the 1922 expedition.

In February 1931 Morshead stayed in Burma while the rest of the family returned to England for reasons of schooling. It was a time of unrest. A rebellion had started in Burma, against British rule, and Thakin rebels were in the vicinity of Maymyo. A colleague of Morshead had been shot at by a disaffected Survey employee who had been convicted of attempted murder. On 17 May 1931 Morshead set off riding by himself and later that day his riderless pony was discovered back in Maymyo. After extensive searching his body was found next day in the jungle nearby. He had been shot in the chest at point blank range. Two people were arrested, an ex-Gurkha who had been out shooting at the time, and the man whose gun he had been using. There was no apparent motive and no charges were ever brought because both men seemed to have alibis.

Dr Alexander Heron was a member of the 1921 British Mount Everest Expedition.

Alexander Heron was a Scottish geologist who became Director of the Geological Survey of India. He participated in the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition following which he produced a geological map of the Everest region of Tibet.

1922 expedition - The Survey of India nominated Heron to accompany the 1922 expedition as geologist even though the Tibetan authorities had refused permission [they had accused the 1921 party of mining precious stones and disturbing Demons]. Frederick Bailey was Britain's political advisor for Tibet and he continued with his predecessor's decision not to allow geologists. So, even though Heron joined the party at Kalimpong hoping for a last-minute reprieve, the Foreign Office in London, not wanting to cause diplomatic difficulty, instructed Charles Bruce, the leader of the expedition, not to allow Heron to participate and he had to return to Darjeeling. Despite all this Heron's discoveries were to be the foundation for the unofficial later work of Noel Odell on the 1924 expedition and Lawrence Wager on the 1933 expedition.

Born in 1779 in Bengal. Son of Charles Grant.

Admitted pensioner at Magdalene, aged 15 in 1795.

Craven Scholar, 1799; B.A. (3rd Wrangler) 1801; 2nd Chancellor's Medal, 1801; M.A. 1804.
Made a Fellow in 1802.
Called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn, 30 January 1807.
King's Serjeant in the Court of the Duchy of Lancaster and one of the Commissioners of Bankrupts.
M.P. for Elgin Burghs, 1818; for Inverness Burghs, 1826; for Norwich, 1830 and 1831; for Finsbury, 1832.
Commissioner of Board of Control, 1830. P.C., 1831. In the House of Commons he persistently championed the movement for repealing the civil disabilities of Jews. Judge Advocate-General, 1832.
Served as Governor of Bombay, 1835-1838, in which capacity he brought Aden into the British Empire (1838: the first acquisition of Queen Victoria’s reign).
Knighted, 1834. K.C.H., 1834.

In 1829 he married Margaret, daughter of Sir David Davidson, of Cantray, Nairnshire, and had issue.
Well known as a hymn-writer. A book of sacred poems by him was published by his brother Charles, Lord Glenelg in 1839. ‘O worship the King’ has been adopted as ‘the College hymn’.
His Indian servants believed he was reborn as a cat.

Died 9 July 1838, at Dapoorie, India. Buried at Poona.

A volume of his sacred poems was published by his brother Charles (Lord Glenelg) in 1839:

Arms in Hall glass, W2. Memorial brass in Chapel.

Master of Magdalene College, 1797 - 1813

Educated at Peterhouse. Successor Dr Peter Peckard as Master. He was 'a man of no particular distinction who, as vicar of Saffron Walden, archdeacon of essex and a justice of the peace, was known at Audley End' [ie. known to the Visitor who had the power to appoint the Master. At this time the position of Visitor was held jointly by the Revd Dr and Mrs Parker].
He was not greatly interested in academic distinction and had no time for Evangelicas [who dominated Magdalene at this time]. His Mastership marked the start of a downward spiral from which it took a century to emerge.

He served as Vice-Chancellor, 1800-1801.

Most exceptionally, he was buried in the College Ante-Chapel, under a diamond-shaped slab.

An English portrait painter, much influenced by Reynolds, who achieved fame as a brilliant colourist.

An English portrait painter, printmaker and caricaturist, he was the founder of a dynasty of artists who followed in his footsteps.

Master of Magdalene College, 1995-2002

Educated at Christ Church Oxford. University of Cambridge, John Henry Plummer Professor of Cell Biology, 1983-2001; Fellow of Churchill College until taking up the Mastership; Honorary Fellow, 2002. Chairman of The Wellcome Trust & Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer & Developmental Biology, 1991, which was renamed The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in 2003 in recognition of his inaugural directorship. Japanese Academy’s Emperor Hirohito Prize for Biology, 1987; Israel’s Wolf Prize for Medicine, 1989; Copley Medal, 2003; Hon ScD 2007; Nobel Prize for Medicine 2012.

Further Reading:
Article 'Appointment to the Mastership' by Peter Grubb, College Magazine vol. 38 (1993-94) pp. 8-9
Article, 'Hail and Farewell' by Eamon Duffy, College Magazine, vol. 46 (2001-02) pp. 9-11

Alasdair Rennie is an award winning artist who paints portraits, landscapes and still-life, he is an accomplished figurative sculptor and muralist.