SUMMER 2015
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New Plans for Old Granary and Tennis Court Lawn Memories from one of our first students New Bursar for Darwin Round up of the 50th Anniversary Year
News for the Darwin College Community
The Master at the Senate House © SirCam
A Message from Mary Fowler Master
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t the very end of 'Origins', Charles Darwin tells us of “the endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful [that] have been, and are being, evolved.” And so it is with the College: Darwin evolves. Its evolution over the decades is producing endless new forms, and the College's footprint now stretches across the generations and around the planet, yet I hope we remain firmly grounded in the strong collegiate virtues - supporting individuals, building the community. What's happened in the academic year 2014-5? – there's much to report. But put simply, the food is excellent, and the dinners are packed; the DarBar flourishes and remains a place where debate can shift in a second from Aeschylus to apoptosis; sporting success comes to some but not others; and away in quiet corners, everywhere from library cubicles to wi-fi lawns, theses are written, knowledge moves ahead. And to end the Easter Term came the splendid news of a knighthood for Professor Harry Bhadeshia, a Darwin alumnus and for 30 years a Fellow. The theme for the 2015 Darwin College lectures was “Development” www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/lectures. It was a superb series, wildly popular. Sir John Gurdon, winner of the 2012 Nobel prize for his work on stem cells launched the series with a marvellous
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lecture, taking us from tadpoles to the prospect of really helpful medical therapies. Next, completely different, came Katharine Grainger, who holds both a 2012 Olympic gold medal and a PhD on homicide, who gave a wonderful guide to the development of an athlete. Then the astronomer Richard Ellis, who as sometime Plumian Professsor and so successor to our own Sir George Darwin whose house Newnham Grange forms the core of the College, gave a really illuminating account of the Development of Galaxies. Next, the psychologist Bruce Hood took the inner view, “Developing a sense of self”, exploring that most self-centred of development questions, how we ourselves develop. In February we heard from Dame Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist of the Met Office, on “The Development of Climate”. Accurate weather forecasting, dates back to Charles Darwin's Captain Fitzroy, and is a remarkable achievement that we now take for granted. The architect, Michael Pawlyn, a pioneer in “Biomimicry” showed how much architecture can learn from biology using biological structures as a source of inspiration. The following week, Ha-Joon Chang challenged our notions of development in the economic sense, considering the complex relationships between the wealthy countries and the poor. It is a lecture that policy makers would do well to download and consider very carefully.
Finally, rounding off a superb and eclectic set of lectures, we heard from Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Acorn, whose spin-off Advanced RISC Machines, ARM, is a major FTSE-100 company. Hermann and his colleagues helped create a cluster of high tech businesses around Cambridge that is now seen as a vital engine of growth in the UK economy. Once the lectures were over, it was time to visit the wider Darwin community. First Berlin, soon followed by Beijing, where I had dinners with very cheerful groups of Darwinians. The delights of alumni dinners are the long-lost catching up, the reinvigoration of old friendships, and the launch of new friendships between people of different years, who have in common their membership of the College. This was especially so in Berlin – a lovely get together for old and new friends. Then came Hong Kong, where some years ago I'd spent a sabbatical period. Amongst other meetings I lunched with our first student from Hong Kong, who was at Darwin in the 1960s, and spent a most enjoyable evening in the China Club with a bubbling group of Darwinians of all ages, some very recent graduates, some old enough to be very distinguished indeed. In the summer I hosted
events even further afield, in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. More about these gatherings in the ‘Development Office article’ on pages 14 and 15. It was wonderful to see old close friends getting together again, and new links growing between the generations. Now to sadder news: the sudden death last October of our Honorary Fellow Sir John Bradfield, formerly Bursar of Trinity College, founder of the Cambridge Science Park and the modern port of Felixstowe, and the Newton Trust. Back in 1962 he was on a train with the bursars of St. John's and Gonville and Caius Colleges when the train stopped just outside Cambridge. Time dragged on; the train did not move. By the time it finally got going again, the concept of Darwin College was born. Sir John spent the next half-century advising the College, guiding our finances, keeping us sound. Retaining his remarkable mind and an extraordinary gift for finance, he was a great friend, our oracle even to the last. The College's debt to him is immense. In a remarkable tribute to him, Trinity College are making a very generous gift in his memory: more on that in the following pages.
Photos © SirCam
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SUMMER 2015
John Bradfield Court
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arwin delights in a tranquil compact site, right in the centre of Cambridge, with the infinite charm which derives from being on a tree-lined river bend, with islands and bridges, and rivercraft gliding by. Our gardens have something to please the senses in every month of the year. Our buildings range from the historic dwelling houses, to the strikingly modern hall, tower and study centre, via the picturesque Old Granary - nineteenth century industrial premises transformed into an Arts & Crafts domestic curiosity. Running a college for 600+ students from such a small haven of peace and beauty is an interesting challenge. We are working on projects to increase the amount of student accommodation we can offer but they will inevitably involve sites offdomus, however we are always looking at ways of maximising the use of the main site for education, catering, and social and other student-related activities. Now, a significant addition to our facilities for students on the main site is in prospect, with the scheme for the building of a multi-purpose room as the main component of a fitting memorial for Sir John Bradfield who died in 2014. The scheme is for the creation of the John Bradfield Court. In essence the previously unnamed tennis or
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croquet lawn will be so christened, with a modest new building being created to fill the space behind the Old Granary currently occupied by bins, bikes and a smokers’ shelter. The Old Granary itself will be comprehensively refurbished – something not attempted in the College’s 50 year life and now much needed – and it will continue as student accommodation after the work as before. The concept drawings for the new building envisage a multifunctional space for seminars and lectures, for social occasions, for meals and receptions, for student purposes which might range from yoga classes to wine tastings, or from champagne breakfasts to lieder recitals. The College’s existing rooms for such activities are heavily used and generally on the small side. The new single storey building will not be large, but with the creativity of the appointed architects we are confident of bringing into being, if not a Tardis, at least the most efficient use of the limited space available. It will seek to combine with the lawn onto which it will open and the adjacent covered gallery and river bank to make best use of its location. The architects, Allies & Morrison, were appointed following a mini competition. They have excellent heritage building credentials required for the
sensitive refurbishment of the Grade II listed Old Granary, the Counting House (entrance the study centre), the Covered Gallery and Painted Room. Their concept for the new John Bradfield Room is a single story freestanding structure, shaped to fit the irregular space, but featuring a broadly conical sloping roof echoing the steep Old Granary roofs. Detailed designs are yet to be worked up.
from opposite the Old Granary. From our foundation Sir John never ceased his active involvement in the College, delighting in its many successes, and suggesting innovative ways of recovering any reverses. He was an Honorary Fellow for 43 of our 50 years of life and he served as a highly effective member of the Investments Committee throughout the life of the College.
The opportunity to embark upon this exciting project is a result of the relationship of the College with Sir John Bradfield, one which existed for more than half of Sir John’s long life and the totality of the College’s life to the date of his death last year. Sir John was a fundamental part of the College – its genesis, its expansion, and its general working life – for several years longer than the 50 years the anniversary of which the College has just celebrated. From its beginnings as, in Sir John's 1962 document, “Notes on the possible establishment a very modest Graduate College”, his constant interest, ideas, and tireless work helped drive the College forward to the present day's financially stable and academically successful entity.
Sir John was, in the foundation of Darwin, acting his capacity as Senior Bursar of Trinity College, one of our three founding colleges. It is through the splendid generosity of Trinity that the scheme for a John Bradfield Court in Darwin has emerged. Trinity College have warmly promoted and endorsed the proposals for a memorial to Sir John in Darwin in the form of a court named after him with the associated new building and refurbishment work. Trinity has most generously agreed that the sum of £1.5 million will be made available for the scheme’s realisation, subject to the College raising through new donations £500,000. Over £100,000 towards this target has already been raised. The project is exciting, focused on student needs, deliverable in the near future, and substantially funded with Trinity’s gracious gift. The College will be seeking your help in the near future to raise the remaining amount.
Sir John's connection with Darwin began long before the College was even dreamt of. He was known to recall his days as a boy fishing on the Cam
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SUMMER 2015
Interview
Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia
Professor Harry Bhadeshia
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ne of Darwin’s most distinguished Fellows, Sir Harry Bhadeshia received a knighthood in this year’s 2015 birthday honours for his internationally-recognised work in metallurgy. His knighthood kindled much excitement in the Indian media, in other Commonwealth countries, and elsewhere. Indeed, letters of congratulations arrived from all over the world. Harry’s parents had emigrated from India to Kenya, where he spent his adolescence before coming to London and embarking on a remarkable career. Harry’s research and teaching involve investigations into the properties of steel. Aircraft, buildings, bridges, railway tracks, and hundreds of other products need different types of steel. Harry explained that steel contains millions of crystals of great variety. These crystals can be altered to make their properties suit specific needs. Much of the research in Harry’s laboratories focusses upon creating appropriate types of alloys of iron with a minimum of experimentation. One example is the design of a welding alloy which on solidification leaves the joint in a calmed condition.. All this required his team to develop computational methods based on metallurgical understanding. The mission is to create materials suitable for extreme engineering. The team of students and post-doctoral scientists use computers as a tool to implement theory and estimate what might happen when crystals are altered in new ways. Carefully-designed hypotheses are tested on small amounts of steel (say, 100 grams) manufactured in Cambridge, to see if the predictions made are basically correct. If the desired properties are emerging, the researchers increase the tested amounts to 100 kg for a deeper assessment. Of course, sometimes they have to redesign the experiments and adjust or create new theory at either of these two stages. Finally, industrial partners test the concepts on large amounts (9-10 tonnes) of steel, to be sure that scaling does not introduce unexpected difficulties.
Sir Harry has not only headed the team at Cambridge, with its 14-odd members. Starting in 2005, he created – completely from scratch – a similar laboratory at the new Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology in the Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea, which has grown to 15 members. To set up this new Computational Metallurgy Laboratory, Harry spent several months of each year in Korea. Two of his Korean students, both women, went on to do their PhD studies at his laboratory in Cambridge, and other graduate students from Pohang have benefited by spending several months here. Moreover, the Postech laboratory recently succeeded in accomplishing what the 2005-funding bodies set out as their goal. Namely, it has become, within ten years, the world’s leading institute for such research. The task has now been taken over by Professor Dong Woo Suh. Harry was born in Kenya, his parents having left India some years before. After independence from Britain, the Kenyanisation process in the mid- to late1960s forced the entire family to settle in London in 1970. Immediately upon arrival, at sixteen years old, Harry began working at a company laboratory which trained him as a metallurgy technician. The laboratory later arranged for him to join a day-release programme at East Ham College of Technology, to gain further expertise. Impressed by his abilities, the company then sponsored him to attend the Sir John Cass School of Science and Technology (now London Metropolitan University). Not long after, he was admitted to do a PhD at Cambridge University. Harry was not alone in his successes: his father got a job in carpentry and sales, while his mother began work as a dress designer and seamstress – the first woman in the family to be in paid employment. His older brother became a chemist, his sister a professor of geography at the University of Derby (after a PhD from the Open University), and his younger sister a trained nurse. Thus, the entire family profited from coming to England, after a period of real uncertainty about their future.
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SUMMER 2015
Professor Robin Carrell (matriculated 1965)
In December 1964, a young medic from New Zealand, with postgraduate funding from Christchurch Hospital, was preparing to journey to England with his wife and two young children. Robin Carrell was Darwin’s first student, studying for a PhD in the MRC Haemoglobin Unit of the Biochemistry Department. He has written, below, an account of those first days.
Robin Carrell: Memories of Darwin
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he admission of the first students to Darwin took place on a bleak day at the very end of February 1965. The snow that had fallen the week before was turning to slush and the hallway in Newnham Grange was halflit and deserted. I paused, had it been the right decision to turn down a place at St John’s? The front door opened and an older Canadian postgraduate joined me in the hallway. Together we searched out the Bursar who with some uncertainty produced a book, which we both signed. Life at Darwin had fully begun. As a medical postgraduate with a young family I was soon glad I took up the advice of my Professor, Frank Young, to join the college of which he was the founding Master. By March 3rd I was writing home ‘have been lucky enough to get into Darwin a new postgraduate College. This has a limit of 40 members and an endowment of £1,000,000 but at the moment has only 2 members (I’m one), so as the Tutor put it we should be ‘quite comfortable.’ And indeed we were. Newnham Grange still retained the feeling of a family home, presided over with benevolence
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by the Master and serviced with courtesy by Jaros the Butler. The croquet lawn was still there, the dining room was indeed the dining room, and for some months the number of graduate students was fewer than that of the eleven Fellows. Halcyon days. Memorably, with punting, sherry receptions and family parties in the gardens and on the islands. The admission to Darwin College represented for me the completion of one journey and the commencement of another. The first journey had been the six-week trip by ocean liner from New Zealand ending in the ‘dismal train-ride from Southampton, with many miles of Coronation Streets and everything covered with soot’. But that soon changed. Amongst other things, 1965 coincided with the introduction of smoke-free zones and the switch from coal gas – celebrated in Cambridge by the title of Clive James 1967 Footlights Revue, ‘Supernatural Gas’. The whole country seemed to lighten, or was this just the impression of antipodean youth? The three years in Cambridge were immensely fulfilling, with the stimulation of research and with the intellectual camaraderie of College
life. So with the PhD completed, the beginning of 1968 saw a happy family on board ship returning to New Zealand, full of enthusiasm and aspirations. In returning, the adage of Rutherford and Huxley was fulfilled: “Cambridge is a place to be young in or to be old in”. In other words, Cambridge is a place to educate and inspire, but the fruitful product of this is in the subsequent development of independent research elsewhere. In throwing myself into my work when back in New Zealand, there was something that puzzled me. Why were so many of the country’s leaders in research holders of a Cambridge PhD? How did this come about? The answer is in the second of the journeys, the journey within Cambridge that is shared by so many from Darwin – the three or four year transition from a raw postgraduate to that of an assured holder of a doctorate. The Cambridge advantage must lie to a good extent in the collegiate influence on those years of intensive research and scholarship. It is inherently a period of single-minded study that without balance can become blinkered and even obsessive. My observation over the years is that the collegiate system provides a mellowing counterbalance that reinforces the perspective and motivation required for longer-term leadership in research. This was certainly true for me in Darwin. It is difficult, though, to document the how and wherefores of this; it stems from the summation of so many minor interactions and experiences, in life as well as academe. Experiences shared over dinner in Hall revealed that for others too research so often moves on the crest of a wave, only to be followed by a dumping into depressing reality. Snatches of conversations remain in memory. The awe of hearing from another student how the infrared system he was working on could, from Cape Canaveral, detect a match being lit in Boston. The astonishment at learning from a visiting academic of his life’s work on the use of the personal pronoun in Greek literature; and my restraint in not repeating the comment of Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, “a much neglected field of research”. From my host department of Biochemistry, there was in Darwin not only the Master but also Derek Bendall to turn to for advice in adjusting to the inevitable perturbations that develop between a graduate student and supervisor. Specialist as well as general counsel was readily available. When my work moved into thermodynamics, I could consult Moelwyn-Hughes and in Protein Chemistry Ieuan Harris. Gordon Robin, as with other fellows, was a source of quiet common sense. Philip McNair redinked my draft report and tutored me in the use of commas and apostrophes. In such a way, with these and many similar interactions, the transition from technologist to nascent scholar gradually took place.
Other lessons were learnt. Coming from a semi-rural Christian background in New Zealand, I was taught that the meek shall inherit the earth. But in my time at Darwin I realized that, although this may well be true, the meek have to reconcile themselves to the likelihood that they will miss out on a second round of port. The lesson came about in this way. A month or two after I joined Darwin, the number of graduate students had risen to some six in all. We were together in the parlour one evening after dinner, when the eleven Fellows all moved off to a Governing Body meeting. The Master, concerned at leaving us behind, generously arranged for Jaros to bring a decanter of port. Round and round it went. Then I watched with amazement as the older, worldly-wise Canadian poured himself a large glass and then, holding the empty decanter by the neck, rang the bell for the butler. Jaros entered and looked at him dubiously as he requested a further decanter. “But to whose account shall I charge it, Sir?” he said. Back came the unequivocal reply “to the Master, Jaros!” With that, two new terms were added to my antipodean vocabulary – savoir-faire and chutzpah. Another worldly message has stuck with me: when in doubt, just ask. This was learnt early on in my time at Darwin. As the senior member, I found myself unexpectedly presiding at dinner. All went well until towards the end of the meal, after dessert, when I became aware of someone standing on my left. Turning I saw Jaros holding a large white drum with a silver-handled implement on top. Panic! What was I supposed to do? Beat the drum, then jump up and say Benedicto benedicatur? Fortunately I quickly whispered to Jaros “What is it?” He replied, “It is a cheese, Sir. You spoon it from the top”. My education moved a step forward. I could now add a third cheese, stilton, to the two principal cheeses of New Zealand at that time – tasty cheddar and mild cheddar. So I returned to New Zealand with the confidence engendered by a rounded education at Darwin, with some papers in Nature and with a muchexpanded knowledge of world cheeses. Accordingly, my research flourished and no more thought was given to the second half of the Rutherford-Huxley dictum, that Cambridge was also a place to return to. This changed unexpectedly years later, when I was awakened at 2a.m. by a telephone call from Max Perutz, the doyen of molecular biology in Cambridge: would I come back to a tenured post? In the morning my wife turned to me, “That phone call; what was it you said you would do?” The endpoint of all this came, back in a way to where the story began, with my appointment in 1986 to the newly established Chair of Haematology in Cambridge, appropriately created in succession to the personal Professorship held by Frank Hayhoe, the first Vice-Master of Darwin.
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SUMMER 2015
Peter Brindle
Bursar and Fellow retires Peter Brindle retired from the office of College Bursar in December 2014 after 13 years of sterling work for the College. Peter started his working life as a sign writer in his home town of Blackpool. This was fairly quickly followed by a fortuitous move into the RAF; here his very many talents were noticed and developed. So much so that when he retired from the Air Force he had attained the rank of Group Captain and had served in operational and diplomatic posts throughout the world. In 1992 he became a mature student at Downing College where he studied for an MPhil in International Relations and Politics. Luckily for us, Peter enjoyed the Cambridge experience so much that he decided to stay. This benefited firstly Christ’s College where he served as domestic bursar from 1996 to 2001 and then Darwin where he was Bursar from August 2001 until his retirement at Christmas.
Peter’s tenure as Bursar and Fellow was full of fun, his large personality and entertaining anecdotes were enjoyed by students, staff and Fellows alike. He led a very happy ship, or possibly aircraft carrier given his joy of everything aeronautical! The world financial crisis hit very hard during the years Peter worked at Darwin, this was a troubling time for all organisations but particularly a College which needs to supplement student fees with investment income. However, with Peter’s hard work and expertise the College endowment was maintained and soon returned to growth and the College went from strength to strength. Peter is now an Emeritus Fellow and is often seen in College. We are sure that like us you wish Peter a very happy and fulfilling retirement.
Peter Brindle, Bursar Emeritus ©Phil Waterson
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New Bursar John Dix
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s Darwin under its sixth Master embarks upon its sixth decade it does so with pleasing symmetry with its newly appointed sixth Bursar. With a nod to the College’s global community the choice has fallen on an Australian – albeit one who has been in Cambridge for 26 years – and the appointment has broken a pattern at risk of becoming a tradition, in that, unlike my two predecessors, I am not an RAF Group Captain. I come to Darwin after a career in the law, mainly in commercial law and corporate finance. For the last ten years I was Managing Partner of Hewitsons in Cambridge and in that role I had much to do with the Colleges and University. Consequently nothing at Darwin so far has come to me as a complete surprise, although vigilant colleagues in College might nonetheless have noticed the occasional slight elevation of an eyebrow. I came to Cambridge meekly following from Sydney University the woman who became my wife and mother of our three daughters, although how Rowan
The Bursarial Team John Dix and Matthew Edwards at the May Ball 2015 ©SirCam
fitted those in with a career in neuro intensive care medicine, a Darwin PhD, fellowship of another college, and no little amount of rowing, remains something of a mystery to me. Profiles like these customarily mention, with or without mock humility, one’s exceptional achievements. I have none. For exercise I cycle and swim in moderation. For my own amusement I sing in a choir, admission to which is fortunately not regulated by audition. Otherwise I have no hobbies or leisure pursuits sufficiently peculiar to mention. I am delighted to have been chosen for this job, and to come to it at a time when the College is benefitting from the skill and prudence of my predecessors, and with exciting potential projects ahead. I combine the role of Bursar with that of Development Director. I look forward enthusiastically to meeting Darwinians wherever they can be found, and, together with the Darwin community, having a hand in shaping this superb institution for the future. John Dix
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SUMMER 2015
Interview
Nicola Padfield Master of Fitzwilliam College (Diploma in Criminology 1976)
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ecently elected an Honorary Fellow of Darwin College, Nicola Padfield made history on October 1, 2013, when she became the first woman Master of Fitzwilliam. Although she became a fellow in 1991, she had spent many years elsewhere, and, hence, was not the typical ‘internal’ candidate, as will shortly become clear. Her relationship to Darwin was not dissimilar: she had spent the academic year of 1976-77 studying for the Diploma in Criminology, as it was then known. The Cambridge University Institute for Criminology was the leading British educational institute for such a degree. Not only did Nicky find the course and her time at Darwin immensely rewarding, she also met her husband here, Christopher, a PhD student in engineering. They met on her first day, and have been married for 36 years. The diploma in criminology was, she recalled, simply a fantastic course. Both the course and Darwin College were markedly international, with people from dozens of countries coming together to teach and to study. Senior practitioners from related professions were fellow students, including an Australian judge and a Kansas policeman. This internationalism was to become a character not only of Nicky’s life, but of her husband’s – he had already spent several months in Mississippi in 1974, doing field work for his engineering doctorate. Nicky continued her law studies in London, and was called to the Bar in 1978. After this, for nearly a decade she and her husband were out of England, before returning and finally settling down, she to a successful academic career (interspersed with legal work), and he to a career in liaison work between the University and business (he is now a fellow of Trinity Hall.). Her first overseas period was spent studying French law on a French government scholarship at Aix-en-Provence, where she received the Diplome des Etudes Superieures. Her husband
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had already departed for Africa, and after her time at Aix, she joined him, practicing law in The Gambia while he was based in Senegal. Their first child, a daughter, was born on Christmas Day in 1981, and the family was soon off, to spend two years in Nepal and to have two more children before returning to Cambridge in 1988. Her first full-time position at the University was as an Alumni Officer, but she was quickly appointed to a College Lectureship at Fitzwilliam in 1991, and later to a University Lectureship in Law. This, she said, was her real vocation: she is passionate about criminal justice and, particularly, about what happens to people in prisons. She has for many years been committed to exploring the contrast between law-in-books and law-in-practice (in particular, how prisoners actually experience the law). Her academic research is always informed by legal practice; she was a parttime judge (a Recorder) for 12 years, sitting in courts all over the southeast of England. In the course of being Master of Fitzwilliam, she has experienced what many Heads of House feel: the biggest challenge is that the job is never ending; more always needs to be done all the time. For Nicky, one of the most important roles of a College Master is to help encourage an ‘academic ethos’ amongst both students and the wider College community. This involves pre-eminently, she believes, helping students to learn how to think and how to question much more widely than is often the case – not to take so much for granted, not to acquiesce so much in the status quo. Informally this can happen in a simple conversation over lunch, but the College has also tried to develop some formal ways of making intelligent scrutiny a practice. For instance, staff and students are invited to participate in “Master’s conversation” evenings: interesting speakers from all subjects are invited to give a talk and participate in further discussion at a buffet supper. 50–60 students regularly attend and on occasions more. Recently, an audience of over 200 came to hear the Pakistani journalist and Fitzwilliam alumnus, Ahmed Rashid, speak about terrorism.
Other major duties of a Master involve governance; one of the most important, Nicky explained, was how college committees report to the Governing Body about financial issues, admissions policies, and so on. Since the Governing Body is made up of the trustees of the College, it is vital to the running of the College to ensure that the reporting system works efficiently. Fitzwilliam College also has to function well on a tight budget. Another major area is alumni relations: a huge amount of work is needed in developing links with former students and the outside community generally, if the College is to succeed in raising adequate funds for its educational purposes. Nicky has travelled worldwide to forge these crucial links, spending time in Singapore and Hong Kong, Delhi and Mumbai, and in the USA. Fitzwilliam has quite a few students at both graduate and undergraduate level from Singapore; hence, it is a major destination. This historical link with the College is further reinforced by a commemoration of the late Lee Kuan Yew, one of the founders of modern Singapore. Lee Kuan Yew was an undergraduate at Fitzwilliam achieving a starred first in Law. Both barrister and academic, Nicky is now a Reader in Criminal and Penal Justice in the Faculty of Law. She is also a Bencher of the Middle Temple, and enjoys working on its Education Committee. And as Master of Fitzwilliam, a College of some 750 students in all, she is concerned to make sure that the College is loyal to its initial mission as stated at its foundation in 1869 (at that time as a noncollegiate institution): to provide a Cambridge education to undergraduates who were unable to afford membership of a college. Fitzwilliam (which received its Royal Charter in 1966, having already moved into its present site in 1963), remains determined to broaden access to Cambridge University. Pursuit of this goal, along with Nicky’s intense interest in the law of sentencing and the law and practice of release of people from incarceration, fills her working day to overflowing.
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SUMMER 2015
From the Development Office
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or every current Darwin student we have about 15 alumni, over 8000 in all. The job of reaching out to and staying in touch with the Darwin community grows every year. At the conclusion of the 50th Anniversary celebrations we can look back on a range of events and contacts around the globe, involving alumni from the very first intake of students through to the most recent graduates. The Master continues to be a globe trotter and has been delighted to meet a great many Darwinians in their home cities in many corners of the world. The Master and alumni enjoyed gatherings in Toronto, San Francisco, New York, Cape Town and Dublin in late 2013. More recently there have been events in Berlin, Beijing, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. We have had some very positive feedback from these occasions and will be organising more for 2016 - Brussels and the US are already in the diary and more will be happening! If you have been unable to attend any of these events, there will be more in 2016 and beyond. We always give plenty of notice and invite Old Darwinians who live in the vicinity by email or post. It is also worth checking our website, ebulletin, Facebook or Twitter as new events are always being added. Of course we enjoy hosting dinners and lunches in College... The reunion dinner in May every year is always a lovely event full of joyful reminiscences; Darwin College Society reunion dinners are held once a term and the Garden Party is in July. Again keep an eye on the website for more events and if you would like to hold a private alumni dinner in College please do contact us. We can only invite you to events if we have your up to date contact details. Do we have your email address? Or your correct postal address?
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We know that when people move it is a very busy time and it is easy to think that everyone has been contacted with your new details. In fact, the College often gets forgotten and every year we lose contact with alumni who move on and do not update their details with us. Please help us to ‘find’ some of our ‘lost alumni’ by looking at our website darwin.cam. ac.uk/alumni/lostalumni and remember us when you move! Our website is also the place to visit if you would like to purchase something from of our expanding range of memorabilia. New to our range are our much loved Charles and George teddy bears which are dressed in Darwin branded jumpers. Lastly, we are grateful to everyone who took the time to speak to one of our callers during our 50th Anniversary telephone fundraising campaign, and a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to those who donated. Darwin College is a registered charity. We receive no funding from the government and all student bursaries, renovations and new building work is funded by donations from our alumni, friends and grant making organisations. So all donations, of whatever size are very gratefully received. Our next project is ‘John Bradfield Court’ in memory of a key figure in the foundation and first half century of the College. This will give our students a new and much needed multi-functional room at the heart of the College and will provide students living in the Old Granary with modernised rooms which will be a haven in which to study and relax. Further detail of the project and funds needing to be raised, and the very generous support for the project from Trinity College can found on pages 4 and 5. We will be asking for your help in the near future, please do help if you can.
Photos, clockwise from the top left: South African Reunion December 2014, Beijing Reunion April 2015, Canberra July 2015, Singapore August 2015, Melbourne July 2015, Kuala Lumpur August 2015 15
SUMMER 2015
David MacKay Regius Professor of Engineering reporting to the Permanent Secretary. This high-level status was intended to increase the influence he could have on the department. David explained that most of his time was spent in meetings, including a large number of committees such as the department’s management board, its strategy committee, and various budget committees. When he first arrived in September 2009, he had a team of 45 staff members; this number grew to 80 by the time he left, as a result of his having identified needs and obtained agreement on new appointments. These staff were mainly scientists and engineers, many of whom worked on the delivery of departmental programmes such as research in climate science, the reporting of greenhouse-gas emissions, and support for innovation in energy systems.
Professor David McKay
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avid MacKay, who has been a Fellow of Darwin since 1992, became the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor for Energy and Climate Change in September 2009, and continued in this position until July 2014. He remained a professor at Cambridge in his ‘Inference Research Group’ in the Physics Department during this period, but was seconded by the university to work 80% of his time for the government in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Once the new coalition government began in 2010, Chris Huhne replaced Miliband as Secretary of State. In addition, there were three other ministers in DECC, and a thousandodd civil servants working under the Permanent Secretary, Moira Wallace (now president of Oriel College, Oxford). David was appointed to the Senior Civil Service as one of the five Directors-General
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David’s climate-science staff managed several observational programmes using floats and satellites to deliver measurements of ocean salinity and sea-surface temperatures. DECC’s Innovation Programme in 2009 had a budget of £150 million, but by 2010 this had been cut to £50 million. The innovation team support research ideas which have the potential to reduce the long-term cost of the energy system, by giving grants and other help to the best ideas on their way from the inventor’s shed to the marketplace. Some example of innovation supported by DECC range from the development of compact, low-cost energy stores for use in homes to the creation of digital-hydraulic transmissions to improve wind turbines. About twenty of David’s staff provided technical expertise to support DECC’s policy-making and delivery work. These staff functioned as an internal technical consultancy service, helping DECC’s policy teams in a number of ways, such as offering quality assurance for technical aspects of a new piece of policy development. Most of David’s time was spent on the formal processes of running the department, in detailed discussion of policy, always trying to ensure that the consequences of policies were adequately analysed and understood. DECC’s work is difficult, David said, because government has multiple objectives, and often those objectives are in tension with each other. DECC’s objectives included reducing energy poverty, reducing carbon emissions, meeting renewable
energy targets, ensuring security of supply, and improving energy efficiency. Hovering over all these aims were numerous budget constraints and the duty to obtain good value for money; the goal of avoiding embarrassment by having policies that are perceived to have failed; the goal of minimizing legal challenge; and the goal of pleasing the lobbyists, who visited, phoned, and wrote to DECC daily by the dozen. The incompatibility of these objectives was often forgotten. Quite often, a policy-making team would focus on just one or two objectives, forgetting all the others. David gave as an example the fact that wind turbines help with the renewableenergy target, but may hamper supply security (since turbines can generate only intermittently, as with solar panels). When David joined DECC, the renewable target was driving large subsidies to the burning of wood in power stations, with little attention to the possibility that cutting down and shipping millions of tons of trees per year from America to Hull might actually be bad for carbon emissions. Consequently, diplomatic skills and persuasive powers were needed. Only some teams welcomed David’s interventions and challenges, though this was what he was appointed to do. Fortunately, his high rank in the department made it difficult for the less enthusiastic policy-makers to ignore his advice and questions. By the end of his five years at the DECC, David had made a real difference in several respects. The quality of both the public discussion of energy options and the policy-makers’ understanding of energy options has been significantly enhanced through the development of an open-source online energy model called the 2050 Calculator. The processes of initiating and checking policy in DECC are better-governed, and DECC now has a strong engineering team. Further, a more multi-disciplinary culture has been established so that technical analysts are involved in policy initiatives from the earliest possible moment. David felt glad that he had agreed to work in the DECC, though it was certainly a demanding and at times a stressful position. Asked what governments should be doing to deal with our energy problems, he made several suggestions. We need to focus on driving down the costs of low-carbon technologies, through more funding for research and development, as
well as through increased innovation support. If government could have fewer objectives, or prioritise them better, this would also help. They might bring climate change and energy security to the top of their list, while not worrying about the percentage of energy that is “renewable”. And, as soon as possible, we should have an economy-wide carbon tax. David started his academic career by following in the footsteps of his physicist father, Donald, who established the Department of Communication and Neuro-science at Keele University. As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, 198588, David was interested in neural networks and neuro-science, as well as machine learning. He went to Caltech in Pasadena, California for his PhD, where they had, only the previous year, developed an interdisciplinary PhD programme in ‘Computation and Neural Systems’. In January of 1992, he took up the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellowship at Darwin for four years, and could have continued in a Royal Society research position for further years. But he decided to accept the offer in 1995 of a University Lectureship in the department of Physics, where he rapidly became a Reader and later a Professor, finally moving to Engineering in 2013, when he was offered their Regius Professorship. David has published two books – in addition to numerous articles in journals, conference proceedings, and on-line – the first a textbook, Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms (2003), and, more recently, Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (2008). His textbook explores the basic issue of reliable communication over an unreliable information channel. It explains theories of data compression and how to add redundancy, so that when your data are sent over an unreliable line, they can arrive – with no errors – in perfect condition. The celebrated pioneer in this field was Professor Claude Shannon, in 1948, and David’s father was active in this new research area. He focussed on the human brain as an information-processing system, with billions of neurones constituting a sophisticated learning machine. Since David has two very young children, he has ample opportunity to observe such a ‘learning machine’ at its earliest stages, along with the brain’s remarkable development into a highlysophisticated neural network.
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In conversation with...
Catering Manager, Ivan Higney We go behind the scenes at Darwin College, in this our second article in a series of conversations with College staff. How would you describe the kitchens when you first arrived at Darwin nearly two years ago? I think they were a little bit disorganised, a bit lacking in motivation and the staff had lost a love of food. The catering had got a bit stale, the staff worked very hard but lacked direction. A decision to improve the catering had been made before I arrived, so I was bought in to support the kitchen and to modernise it. Today the food is much better, the number we cater for at lunch and dinner has almost doubled and formal halls often have a waiting list. This is because we are going ‘back to basics’ with the food, we use fresh ingredients and we cook food in portions. Opinions on food vary with every person so we invite feedback from students, Fellows and staff, they tell us what they would prefer and we aim to meet these preferences. Remind me when you started? January 2014. And before that? I was at Cambridge Assessment on Hills Road, we had over 2,000 employees and 11 catering sites, I was part of the Managing Team. It was very different from here; college life has been quite an education! Prior to Cambridge Assessment I worked for Midsummer House, and on private yachts, I was also in Edinburgh for six years as an Executive Chef for a chain of restaurants. So I have a commercial background and College is very different to that, my learning curve has been and continues to be steep! And you’ve started a breakfast service. One of my concerns when I started was that service was an hour and a quarter for lunch and about forty-five minutes for dinner. That was the only time we were open during the day. We are now open for breakfast at 8am and close at 7.30pm Monday to Thursday, Friday we shut a bit earlier and we serve brunch on Saturday and Sunday. We also provide a dinner for anyone who isn’t going to Formal Hall on a Friday. You were recently involved in the May Ball. After much debate with the May Ball Committee (we went up to ten quotes!) we provided a dinner before the Ball and served food during the Ball. All the staff enjoyed doing it and it went down really well with the students.
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Of all the changes you have made to the kitchens what is the hardest thing you have had to do? The biggest challenge has been for the department to accept that it doesn’t run the College and for the College to accept that it runs the catering. So if we are asked for dinners and events on certain days rather than say ‘no, we can’t do that’ we will say ‘yes’ if at all possible. We are providing a service for the College; it is then my job to work out how we do it. If an event is in the summer when we have reduced staff we will organise the rotations around that event rather than saying ‘no we can’t because staff are on holiday’. We should support the College and not put barriers up. You mention private dinners, alumni members can presumably organise a dinner through the Development Office with you? Yes, we would encourage that. We can seat 120 in the hall, the Richard King Room can seat up to thirty, we use the gardens in fine weather and we have Newnham Terrace. I would like to see all those rooms being used whether it is for meetings with tea, coffee and biscuits or for dinners with up to five, six or seven courses! Now with Fergus Martin our Head Chef the food is fantastic and our front of house service is parallel to that. So far, what would you say is your greatest achievement here at Darwin? I think it is just saying ‘yes we can do that!’ Before, there was a negative attitude to any extra work. Very rarely do we say ‘no’ and then only because we have something else booked. My greatest achievement is that people have confidence in the Catering Department!
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Fergus is a key member of the team as Head Chef. Yes, he has come from an experienced background in conference catering; he is also a Team Manager of the Clerk Guild of Chefs for competitions. We have entered some competitions this year and the chefs have won three golds, a silver, best in class and best newcomer. They have done really well and that is due to Fergus’s expert tuition. The best thing about working at a Cambridge College? The car parking space, definitely! Seriously, it is being part of changing the ethos of the catering department. We are still in the process of growing the team and it will be two to three years down the line before I can say ‘job done!’ Is there a downside to working in College? The pace of College life, I am used to people saying ‘we need this done by lunchtime’ whereas in College issues go to committee and nine months later we have almost made the decision. I can understand it, but I also find it frustrating. Working in a kitchen can be very stressful, so what do you do in your downtime to relax? I have a great family, my wife and two children. I enjoy spending time with Anastasia (4) and Patrick (6) and they take a lot of my time. I escape every month into a studio with four other guitarists and we record blues and jazz. I picked up the electric guitar two years ago and my playing needs much practice and isn’t ready for the public! I also plan to run at least two 10k races by the end of the year and definitely the Cambridge half marathon in March next year. Thank you Ivan is there anything you would like to add….. I really enjoy my job and I will be here for a good few years to keep the changes going, there is still a lot to do.
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Obituaries
Derek Bendall Emeritus Fellow Derek was born in Coventry, UK, on July 15, 1930 (Saint Swithin’s Day, as he often reminded people if it rained on his birthday). His father was a Master Draper, and his mother a schoolteacher and keen naturalist. He went up to King’s College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences in 1950 and graduated with First Class Honours in Biochemistry in 1953. He became a research student in the same department under the supervision of Robert (Robin) Hill, continuing the line of bioenergetics research at Cambridge that had begun with David Keilin. In his first publication he characterized the cytochrome components in Arum spadices in an attempt to understand the pathway of cyanide-insensitive respiration that had been described a few years earlier. This paper epitomized much of his future research career, which would involve careful biochemical, and especially spectroscopic, analyses of redox proteins, and build on the earlier advances made by Robin Hill. Derek admired Robin greatly, and a photograph of the roof of Ely Cathedral taken using the elegant and highly effective fish-eye camera developed by Robin (Bendall 1994) hung on Derek’s office wall for many years. After completing his PhD in 1957, Derek spent a year in the lab of Christian de Duve in Louvain, Belgium. He then spent 2 years studying the biochemistry of tea fermentation, funded by the Nyasaland (now Malawi) Tea Association, to understand why the quality of the tea grown on Mlanje Mountain was poor. Derek was to remain interested in tea (as a consumer, researcher, and scholar) for the rest of his life. He published papers and supervised PhDs on the biochemistry of tea, and was working on a more general book on tea at the time of his death.
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In 1960, Derek was appointed as a University Demonstrator in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. These posts were for a limited tenure of 5 years, and promotion to a Lectureship was rare, as a matter of departmental principle. He, however, was promoted to a Lectureship in 1965 and remained in the Cambridge Biochemistry Department for the rest of his academic career. Although he continued to make important contributions on tea biochemistry, and cyanide-insensitive respiration in plant mitochondria, he focused more on electron transfer processes associated with the light reactions of photosynthesis, which remained the major theme for the rest of his career. He continued to publish in collaboration with Robin Hill, as well as establishing his own independent program. This included characterization of plastocyanin and photosynthetic cytochromes, and the mechanism of their interactions with other redox carriers. It led to key insights into the roles played by quinones and energy coupling by the cytochrome bf complex. He made a number of further important contributions during the ensuing decades, for example in helping to understand the pathway of cyclic electron transport (technically difficult to study, as a cyclic process) with David Moss and others. His review on this was one of his most cited papers, and 20 years later continues to be cited at a steady rate. Derek continued to work full time until a few days before his death, and his mind remained as acute as ever. However, he had always balanced commitment to his family and his friends with his commitment to science. In 1958 he married Fay, then a postdoc in Robin Hill’s lab, and they raised three daughters. He was a keen musician, playing the piano, and taking pleasure in building instruments—notably a full string quartet of violins, viola, and cello. He was also a very successful gardener, both at home and in Darwin College, and memorably arrived at a group fancy dress party as John
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Tradescant the Younger, identifiable by the plant he was carrying (which also serves as a reminder of how much he valued knowledge of his subject’s history). Derek was always genuinely interested in the work of others, and happy to offer perceptive insights, without forcing them on people. Always modest, he wore his distinction lightly, two descriptions occurred repeatedly in the tributes that came in after his death— gentleman and scholar—and we miss him greatly. Derek is survived by Fay, their daughters Sarah, Rachel, and Kate, and their families. This obituary is an edited version of the one that appeared in Photosynthesis Research
Sir John Bradfield Sir John Bradfield, formerly Bursar of Trinity College, founder of the Cambridge Science Park , the modern port of Felixstowe, and the Newton Trust. One of the visionary founders and Honorary Fellow of Darwin College.
Sir John Bradfield, who has died aged 89, was an outstandingly successful and enterprising college bursar who turned Trinity College, Cambridge, into the richest of all the Oxbridge colleges, while kickstarting what has become known as the “Cambridge Phenomenon” — the explosion of technology, life sciences and service companies that has occurred in the city since the 1970s — by founding Europe’s first “science park”.
Under his predecessor, Tressilian Nicholas, the focus of Trinity’s investment portfolio had been agricultural land. After Bradfield stepped into his shoes in 1956, the college increased the percentage of its capital held in equities and pursued a strategic move towards commercial property development. The foundation for Trinity’s huge financial success in the following years was the acquisition by Nicholas in 1933 of the Trimley estate of nearly 3,800 acres in Suffolk, along the road from Ipswich to the then derelict port of Felixstowe. Nicholas thought that the estate might become valuable for housing development; but as the port, free from the stranglehold of the old Dock Labour Scheme, began to develop in the early 1960s under new ownership, Bradfield surmised that, with Trinity’s help, it could become a competitor to Rotterdam and Le Havre. He borrowed money to put up buildings to let on part of the estate, and, after helping to fight off nationalisation plans by the Labour administration in the 1970s, made use of his contacts book to persuade Margaret Thatcher’s government to introduce enabling legislation, setting in motion a process which has seen Felixstowe develop, mostly on Trinity-owned land, into Britain’s largest container port. At around the same time he conceived the idea – revolutionary at the time – of establishing a “science park”, on a 140-acre farm just north of Cambridge that the college had owned since the time of Henry VIII. The notion was enthusiastically received by Harold Wilson, the prime minister, and by his technology minister Tony Benn, who was pressing the universities to commercialise their research. Founded in 1970, the Cambridge Science Park started slowly as Bradfield struggled to get it up and running in the depths of the early 1970s economic gloom. By 1978 only seven companies had signed up for premises.
However, the development gathered momentum in the 1980s, with tenants ranging from small software companies created by groups of graduates from the university’s computing and engineering departments, to multinational firms such as Schlumberger and IBM, keen to establish what Bradfield described as “listening posts” tuned into research being carried out in the university’s laboratories. By 2010, when the park celebrated its 40th anniversary, it could boast nearly 100 firms employing more than 5,000 people. During Bradfield’s time as Trinity bursar the college’s external revenue rose nearly 80fold, from £200,000 to £15.3 million, while the value of shares in its trust fund increased nearly 30 times. When Rab Butler was Master of Trinity, he liked to boast that the college’s new-found wealth had enabled it to harbour as many Nobel prizewinners as in the whole of France. But Bradfield was keen that the money would benefit the university more generally. In 1964, together with the bursars of St John’s and Caius, he was instrumental in the foundation of Darwin College, to meet the need for more fellowships and better accommodation for graduate students. In 1988, at a time of cutbacks in higher education funding, Trinity established the Newton Trust, a multi-million-pound fund to help the university’s research costs and student scholarships.
Other work included protein synthesis and secretion in the silk glands of caterpillars and spiders, and plant enzymes. He would no doubt have gone on to a distinguished career as a biologist had he not accepted the job of college bursar, which he took in 1956 after serving as junior bursar for five years. As well as his investments at Felixstowe and the Cambridge Science Park, in the 1960s Bradfield purchased land in Kent, which was developed into a business and science park within easy reach of the Channel Tunnel. The huge success of his investments allowed him to be sanguine when Trinity was named as one of the biggest losers from the collapse of Polly Peck in 1990. While admitting to being somewhat irritated, Bradfield could reassure his colleagues that it would not mean “soup at High Table”. Bradfield served as the first chairman of the Addenbrooke’s NHS Trust, from 1993 to 1997, and as last chairman of the Commission for New Towns. He was also a founding trustee of the Fund for Addenbrooke’s (now the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust). John Bradfield was appointed CBE in 1986 and knighted in 2007. He married, in 1951, Jane Wood, who survives him with their son. Sir John Bradfield, born May 20 1925, died October 13 2014 Published with the kind permission of The Telegraph
John Richard Grenfell Bradfield was born in Cambridge on May 20 1925 and educated at Cambridge and County High School for Boys, from where he won a scholarship to Trinity to read Natural Sciences. He went on to take a PhD, and was appointed to a research fellowship in cell biology. In one of his studies he borrowed his mother’s chickens to elucidate how the eggshell is secreted within the adult hen, and became the first to report that the shell forms with the sharp end nearest the exit, before rotating 180 degrees just before laying.
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SUMMER 2015
Darwin College Society As food seems to have achieved some importance to our days out I have to add the food at the DCS Formal Hall dinners has been top class and the post dinner “nibbles” have been 'scrumptious'.
DCS at Hayley Wood
Alumni local to Cambridge have had an interesting and varied events programme organised for them in 2015! Just before Christmas we enjoyed a ghost walk in part of Cambridge near Darwin with Prudence Jones, in March there was a fascinating trip to both Peterborough Museum and Cathedral both with excellent tour guides and a good lunch. We also appreciated another first rate guide on our spring walk in Hayley Wood in April (and another good lunch).
Our year finished with the summer meet at an outdoor event in Cambridge. This year it was the Merry Wives of Windsor which was part of the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, the company was good and we had an excellent opportunity to see the Kings College Fellows' Garden! Our next event will feature alumna Alison Wilson talking about the history of New Hall which will take place immediately before the November 6th Formal Hall dinner. The talk is free but please make sure you book! Other events are being arranged for early 2016 and will of course be advertised on our website when organised. Terry Moore
Darwin College Boat Club Darwin College Boat Club has had an incredible year with everything one can expect from College rowing. Starting with a strong intake of Novices resulted in an amazing first (Novice Men) and second place (Novice Women) at the annual Queens’ Ergs competition. Following this success and a cold but profitable training camp, everything seemed lined up nicely for Lent Bumps. Then early one morning in February the M1 boat “Chester White” (named after our founding President) was involved in a head on collision. Luckily no one was injured, but the incident left our boat split by a rigger from bow ball to bow seat. This however did not prevent M1 along with W1 from earning Blades in Lent Bumps, scoring a well deserved double win for first boats. The term break after Bumps was far from wasted with both W1 and M1 representing the club at their respective Head of the River races in London, finishing 165th (W1) and 209th (M1). Off the water DCBC ran the most successful fundraising 24-hour Ergometer Marathon in years, rowing 506 km and raising over £1700 of urgently needed funds
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Darwin College Boat Club 2015
which, along with other donations will go towards a new Women's 8+. Easter term was kicked off with another training camp at Peterborough that was also joined by St Catherine’s College, Oxford for added competition. A well-run year by both squad Captains almost resulted in another double win this time for M2 and W2, both missing Blades by just one bump. The top crews had a tough time in the higher divisions but have now established themselves firmly in the second division. I hope you all agree with us that this has been a remarkable year for DCBC and we would like to thank the committee for their work and dedication. Also we would like to thank all our Alumni who have been very supportive both with encouragement and donations. If you wish to follow the Boat Club more closely, get in contact with the Darwin College Development Office who will be able to point you in the right direction. Darwin College Boat Club Committee 2014/2015’
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2014 50th Anniversary Year
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The College celebrated its 50th Anniversary year in 2014. Alumni enjoyed many events both in the UK and abroad. Many receptions, dinners, fun days and garden parties were held from December 2013 until Summer 2014. If you couldn’t join us, we would love to see you on another occasion, possibly at one of the many dinners we are planning for 2016. A) One of the biggest events of the year was the 50th Anniversary Formal Hall dinner. The hall was full of Old Darwinians catching up with old friends and making new ones! B), The Master hosted a very successful reception for Old Darwinians in Toronto in December 2013, a few days later E) the Master was in San Francisco with local alumni. Mary also hosted a very successful dinner in New York in March. C) The year started with the successful launch at The British Academy, London of D) ‘Darwin College a 50th Anniversary Portrait’. F, G, H and I) The Big Weekend. Over a long weekend in the summer of 2014 the College hosted a Garden Party, a day of lectures and a children’s fun day. The weather stayed dry and sunny and each event was enjoyed by all.
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SUMMER 2015
© Ines Lion
Calendar of Alumni Events 2015: Friday 23rd October 7.00pm Reunion dinner in Brussels hosted by the Master Venue: Aux Armes de Bruxelles Friday 6th November 7.00pm Darwin College Society Reunion Dinner during Formal Hall Venue: Dining Hall and Richard King Room
2016:
Rocket-powered Cambridge punt fuelled by Chelsea buns To mark the launch of the Cambridge Science Centre's new exhibition COSMIC the river front at Darwin hosted the maiden voyage of a rocket-powered punt fuelled by Chelsea buns in the summer. Iconic Chelsea buns from Fitzbillies were used to launch the boat. Crowds of onlookers lined the river to watch the journey of the pilot John London on Beagle Two. BBC East were there to film the short blast along the river, google ‘BBC East rocket powered punt’.
Friday 15th January to Friday 4th March Darwin College Lecture Series All alumni welcome, if you would like to attend Formal Hall afterwards please contact the Alumni Office Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall Friday 11th March 7.00pm Darwin College Society Reunion Dinner during Formal Hall Venue: Dining Hall and Richard King Room Friday 6th May 7.00pm Alumni Reunion Dinner for years 1975-1985 and 1990-2000 Venue: Dining Hall Friday 10th June 7.00pm Darwin College Society Reunion Dinner during Formal Hall Venue: Dining Hall and Richard King Room Friday 1st July 6.00pm Old Darwinians’ Garden Party Venue: Garden
Editors: Kathy Wheeler, Sophia Smith The editors especially welcome short articles, pictures and news from all our alumni but particularly those overseas. Correspondence to: darwinian@darwin.cam.ac.uk To sign up for our ebulletin use this link: eepurl.com/pLzBH or scan our QR code Cover image ©Robep, Flickr