St John's College was founded in 1511 by the last will and testament of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, on the original mediaeval site of the hospital of St John. The buildings have been added to steadily over the years. Outstanding features include the Dining Hall, with its 16th century hammerbeam roof and old linen-fold panelling, and the Chapel built by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the Victorian gothic style. St John's has a distinguished tradition of religious music, and its Chapel Choir, which has performed since the 1670s, is today world-famous through recitals, broadcasts and records.
For full information about St John's College visit their website. This contains information, maps, details of their long history and current activities. Click here to see a map of where St John's College is in Cambridge. A virtual tour of the College can be found at www.joh.cam.ac.uk/about/tour/
Science at St John's
St John's College and the University of Cambridge are more than a beautiful and historic location. The combination of the old and the new epitomizes the fenland area of Eastern England, one of the major dynamos of intellectual advance in the modern era. The Nobel Prize, established in 1901, has been awarded to 83 affiliates of the University of Cambridge, more than any other institution. Fellows and Alumni from St John's College who have been awarded the prize include:
- 1933 Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize in Physics, for quantum mechanics
- 1947 Edward Appleton, Nobel Prize in Physics, for discovering the Appleton Layer
- 1951 John Cockcroft, Nobel Prize in Physics, for using accelerated particles to study atomic nuclei
- 1958 Frederick Sanger, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for the structure of the insulin molecule
- 1962 Maurice Wilkins, Nobel Prize in Medicine, for determining the structure of DNA
- 1977 Nevill Mott, Nobel Prize in Physics, for the behavior of electrons in magnetic solids
- 1979 Abdul Salam, Nobel Prize in Physics, for electromagnetic and weak particle interactions
- 1979 Allan Cormack, Nobel Prize in Medicine, for developing CAT scans
- 1980 Frederick Sanger, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for the theory of nucleotide links in nucleic acids
