Darwin College, Cambridge

Darwin College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. Standing on the bank of the River Cam adjacent to Queens' College, Cambridge, it was founded in 1964 by three of the University's older colleges Trinity College, Gonville and Caius and St. John's College. It was the first college in Cambridge or Oxford to admit graduate students only and also the first college in Cambridge or Oxford to admit both men and women. It is named for the family of Charles Darwin, which previously owned some of the property which the college now occupies (as related in Period Piece by Gwen Raverat). Family portraits of the Darwin family have been lent to the college and can be found on the walls of several of the college's main rooms. The work to convert and extend the buildings was funded by the founding colleges and substantial donations from the Rayne Foundation.

The college has around 600 students, mostly studying for M.Phil (a one-year course) or Ph.D. (normally three-year course) degrees. About half the students are from overseas.

The college hosts the annual Darwin lectures, a series of talks for a general audience around a single theme, given by eminent speakers who are leading authorities in their fields. Most of the series of lectures have been published as books.

Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall are Darwin alumni. Paul Clement, the current United States Solicitor General, read the MPhil in Politics and Economics at Darwin in 1988-89. In recent years, the Canadian TV host Seamus O'Regan studied at the college.

César Milstein, who received the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was a fellow of Darwin College from 1980 to 2002. Sir Karl Popper and the Nobel Prize winner Max Perutz were honorary fellows, as is Amartya Sen. Oliver Letwin was a research fellow from 1981 to 1982.

In 1994 Darwin College completed construction of a new library and study centre. The centre is built on a narrow strip of land alongside the millpond in Cambridge, and uses a structure of green oak and lime mortar brickwork. The building uses high-level automatically opening windows and a chimney to control natural ventilation. Unfortunately the green oak dried and shrank, causing the window frames to jam, so the system failed. The building had been designed with special connections which could be tightened to account for the shrinkage, but these also warped, and could not be used.

Darwin College Boat Club is a popular student society at Darwin College. With a strong progression over the past few years, the club is one of the most successful graduate rowing clubs in the UK.

Darwin College Football Club play in the long established Cambridge University Association Football League (CUAFL), representing the only graduate college within CUAFL. The club plays throughout the year in and out of term.