Cambridge University Archives – Cambridge University Library Special Collections

Ladies in the Library

Posted on 22 January 2025 by Jill Whitelock

January 1855. The British coalition government was in crisis over accusations of mismanagement in the Crimean war. In the literary world, the final installment of […]

Anniversaries, Cambridge University history, Library history, Photographs, women

‘Our singular patron’: Thomas Cromwell and Cambridge University

Posted on 12 December 2024 by Jacky Cox

TV viewers enjoying the tumultuous final episodes of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light may be interested in Thomas Cromwell’s impact on Cambridge in […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history, Special Collections

‘The Central Science’: records of the Chemistry Department added to the University Archives

Posted on 1 August 2024 by Jacky Cox

A knowledge of molecular structures and properties is crucial in our understanding of large parts of science, from semiconductors to proteins and from the composition […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history, Special Collections

A crowd’s-eye view: the 1897 Cambridge vote for women’s degrees

Posted on 21 May 2024 by Jill Whitelock

Sea of straw hats outside the railings. Crackers &c. & then bags of flour, confetti &c. came showering down wind. Francis Jenkinson, University Librarian On […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history

Archives and Modern Manuscripts Image of the Month – Book storage tunnels under the Senate House lawn

Posted on 1 May 2024 by Jacky Cox

By the time the decision was taken in March 1921 to build an entirely new home for the University Library west of the river, several […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Special Collections

‘Nothing more important for the linking of the sciences and humanities’: archives from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Posted on 6 September 2023 by Jacky Cox

Excavated from a basement store last December, archives from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) are now catalogued as part of the […]

Acquisitions, Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Medicine, Recent acquisitions, Science, Special Collections

Oppenheimer and the poisoned apple

Posted on 15 August 2023 by Jacky Cox

This summer’s blockbuster, Oppenheimer, begins the chronological recounting of the physicist’s life in Cambridge. The recent Harvard graduate, later dubbed the ‘father of the atomic […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history, Physics, Science, Special Collections

Becoming Vice-Chancellor …

Posted on 29 June 2023 by Jacky Cox

Professor Deborah Prentice, the new Vice-Chancellor, assumes the duties of office on 1st July and will be formally admitted at a Congregation of the Regent […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history, Special Collections

Egyptian antiquities ..in a country house in Bulac From Views in Egypt by Luigi Mayer. 1801.

A game of stones – how Cambridge acquired a cast of the Rosetta Stone

Posted on 7 December 2022 by Catherine Ansorge

Exactly two hundred years ago, in 1822, the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion (1790–1832) succeeded in his attempts to decipher the hieroglyphic text of the famous Rosetta […]

Anniversaries, Archives, Cambridge University history, Collectors and collecting, Near and Middle Eastern, Special Collections, Travel