A student from St John’s joined two alumni – including an Olympian – to race in one of the biggest events in the global rowing, The Head of the Charles Regatta (HOCR) in Boston, Massachusetts.  Gemma King, a former St John’s undergraduate and now PhD student in stem cell biology, and alumni Guy Pooley and Kirsten Van Fossen competed for Cambridge University Boat Club (CUBC) at the event.…

A St John's poet, essayist, reviewer, and editor has been awarded the 2024 Royal Irish Academy Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction. Vona Groarke, the College's Writer in Residence, won the award for her book, Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, a poetic account of Irish women domestic servants in New York in the 1890s. From left: Professor Pat Guiry, President of the Royal Irish Academy…

The Rev’d Dr Victoria Johnson, Dean of Chapel at St John’s College, has been announced as the new Canon Theologian at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. Dr Johnson will be visiting Canon Theologian and a non-executive member of the Cathedral Chapter in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, alongside her role at St John’s. She said: “I’m really delighted to be contributing to the life of the Cathedral…

Theoretical physicist Professor David Tong will give the 2024 St John’s College Penrose Biennial Lecture, named in honour of Sir Roger Penrose, the renowned mathematician, physicist and Nobel Laureate.  Professor Tong, Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College, will give…

The striking Great Gate of St John’s is an iconic feature of the streetscape of Cambridge and is the backdrop of countless photographs taken by locals, tourists and members of the College. It is decorated with Lady Margaret Beaufort’s coat of arms and the animals on either side are yales – mythical beasts with antelopes’ bodies, goats’ heads and swivelling horns. A statue of St John the…

Five academics at St John’s College have been nominated by their peers for individual contributions to positive research culture at the University of Cambridge.  St John’s Fellows Professor Meredith Crowley, Dr Amy Orben, Professor Ulinka Rublack and Professor Michael De Volder were among 43 academics to be recognised for best practice at the University of Cambridge’s inaugural Research…

New dyes created one of the most important visual experiences of the Renaissance period, yet their story has been hidden until now, says a St John’s College academic in a major new book published today (17 October). Theatrical productions and period films uphold broad assumptions that black clothing dominated among elites during the period, while ordinary people wore coarse greys and bleached…

Professor Sir Richard Friend FRS, Director of Research at the Cavendish Laboratory and Fellow of St John’s College, has been awarded the 2024 Isaac Newton Medal and Lecture – the most prestigious prize of the Institute of Physics. The award, which recognises groundbreaking physicists, honours Sir Richard for his pioneering and enduring work on the fundamental electronic properties of…

Eight current and recent graduates of St John’s College have received accolades for their excellent academic work and exam results in 2024. Hannah Kang Wolter, who graduated in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies this summer, has been awarded The Robert M Somers Prize for an outstanding performance in her Chinese Studies part II exam. Fellow recent graduate Alis Francis receives the William…

A St John’s classicist-turned-astronomer has helped discover and name a gigantic pair of black hole jets – the largest seen in the universe. Aivin Gast, who has just begun his MPhil in Heritage Studies at St John’s, was part of the international research team that identified and named the gargantuan fountains of plasma and particles shooting from above and below a supermassive black hole.…

The 18th Andrew Chamblin Memorial Lecture, entitled Adventures with Black Holes: Past, Present and Future, will be given in Cambridge, UK, by Professor Andrew Strominger, Gwill E York Professor of Physics at Harvard University. The public talk will take place at 5pm GMT on Tuesday 29 October 2024 at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge and it will also be livestreamed online.…

The author of a landmark UK report calling for radical change in how we measure economic success to protect our most precious asset, nature, will give the first Climate Crisis Lecture at St John’s College, Cambridge, on 21 October 2024. The lecture by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta is titled ‘Economic Possibilities in the Anthropocene’ – the Anthropocene being a term to describe the time during…

An academic from St John’s College has been selected for the 2025 Institute of Mathematical Statistics Grace Wahba Award and Lecture.   Professor Richard Samworth, who is College Lecturer in Pure Mathematics, University Professor of Statistical Science, Director of the Statistical Laboratory at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, and a Fellow of St John’s, is only the fourth recipient of…

A global scientific organisation has honoured a Fellow of St John’s College with a Citation Laureate in Economics. Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Emeritus Professor, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, has been recognised by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) at intelligence firm Clarivate Plc ‘for integrating nature and its resources in the…

A 258-year-old first edition of a groundbreaking book by animal portraitist George Stubbs is now in the care of the Old Library of St John’s College thanks to a former veterinary student. The copy of The Anatomy of the Horse, published in 1766, was presented to Tanya Kirk, the College Librarian, by alumnus Philip Paxman, who studied at St John’s to be a vet in the 1960s. Mr Paxman bought the…

Teenage girls have taken part in a free residential camp at St John’s College to find out what it would be like to study Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. The Women in Mathematics programme, which is now in its second year at St John’s, was set up to encourage more female A-Level and equivalent students to consider applying to Cambridge to read maths. Twenty-four gifted young…

A study in mice has found that the bacteria Bifidobacterium breve in the mother’s gut during pregnancy supports healthy brain development in the fetus. Researchers have compared the development of the fetal brain in mice whose mothers had no bacteria in their gut, to those whose mothers were given Bifidobacterium breve orally during pregnancy, but had no other bacteria in their gut. Nutrient…

An ex-Army officer and former Domestic Bursar of St John’s College has died at the age of 91. Colonel Richard Henry Robinson OBE, a Fellow of St John’s, began his uniformed career as a trooper in the British South Africa Police before joining the British Army. After retiring from the military, Col Robinson was appointed Domestic Bursar at St John’s, and for 13 years oversaw the many operational…

Our Research Fellowships open doors for rising stars – Nobel Prize-winners have begun their academic careers at St John’s, one Research Fellow coined the phrase ‘Big Bang’, and another was a Bletchley Park code-breaker. The research interests of St John’s Fellows remain as extensive as ever – they are working at the forefront of everything from artificial intelligence, and evolutionary…

Sixth-formers from England and Wales have attended a free two-day residential course at St John’s College to give them an insight into life at the University of Cambridge. Forty-eight A-level and equivalent students attended the Natural Sciences Residential on 8 and 9 July that included taster lectures, Q&A sessions, supervisions and workshops with academics and guest speakers at St John’s…

The Assistant Curate at Hampstead Parish Church has been named as the next Chaplain of St John’s College in Cambridge. The Rev’d Graham Dunn trained for ministry at Westcott House in Cambridge and took the Cambridge University Bachelor of Theology for Ministry as a member of Gonville & Caius College. He holds a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature and an MA (Hons) in English…

Cambridge scientists have developed an ‘atlas’ describing how proteins act inside human cells that could help in the design of new drugs to treat dementia and many cancers. The AI tool could be used to search for the origins of such diseases that are related to proteins misbehaving. The atlas, which is published today (10/7/2024) in Nature Communications, allows the researchers to find new…

Professor Richard Gilbertson, FRS, FMedSci, FRCP, EMBO, a pioneering children’s cancer specialist and Fellow of St John’s College, has been announced as the next Master of Gonville & Caius College. Fellows of Gonville & Caius expressed their intention at a meeting yesterday (26 June) to pre-elect Professor Gilbertson as the 44th Master of the College. He is due to take office on 1…

St John’s Fellow Professor Eske Willerslev is leading a major new research project into how ancient environmental DNA can be harnessed to develop climate change-resilient crops. A grant of up to DKK (Danish krone) 585 million – more £66.3 million – has been awarded to the Ancient Environmental Genomics Initiative for Sustainability (AEGIS) by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the…

St John’s College has won the highest accolade in the University of Cambridge’s environmental award scheme for the fourth year in a row. Fellows, staff and students have been working hard on green initiatives over the past year to make the College community an even more sustainable place to live, study and work. Now St John’s has been awarded Platinum in this year’s Green Impact awards, an…