Ancient & Adaptable

Every morning at Cambridge University, 3,401 budding scientists peer into electron microscopes or ponder the dynamics of rocket propulsion in air-conditioned labs that gleam with ultramodern glass and aluminum. Then, with medieval black gowns flapping, they ride off on rusty bicycles to another world: lunch with 3,751 arts undergraduates (never "students") fresh from reading Sophocles and Shakespeare in a library built by Christopher Wren. Soon scientists and classicists are sunk in shabby armchairs before gasping gas heaters, sipping sherry with their tutors. All around them is a happy blend of past and future: the green-lawned beauty of college "backs" on the River Cam, the sounds of Cantabs cheering on rowers with "Forward Christs!"--a way of life and learning that wears its seven centuries as jauntily as the modern undergraduate's motto: "I'm all right, Jack."

Apples & Atoms. Though Oxford and Cambridge are twin peaks of English education, Americans are more aware of Oxford, perhaps because Rhodes scholars go there. Few even realize that the reputable university in Cambridge, Mass., was founded by a B.A. (Cantab.) named John Harvard; few could guess that Cambridge is the alma mater of Bacon, Byron, Darwin, Erasmus, Milton, Newton, Spenser, Tennyson, Thackeray, Walpole and Wordsworth. Strong in classics and "PPE" (philosophy, politics, economics), Oxford has dominated Whitehall and Westminster. But now England has a surfeit of politicians and debaters. It needs more scientists and engineers, and so it needs Cambridge.

In those fields, Cambridge has led Oxford ever since the 17th century, when legend has it that an apple plopped on Don Isaac Newton's head and inspired his theory of gravity. In its famed Cavendish Laboratory, founded in 1872, Cambridge boasts one of the world's great centers of nuclear research. At Cavendish in 1919, Sir Ernest Rutherford first demonstrated nuclear reaction. Then Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron; others have gone on to everything from the kinetic theory of gases to isolating the insulin molecule and piercing space with radio astronomy. "When it comes to research," says one Cavendish man. "we knock Oxford for six."

"Forward." Cambridge was started in the early 13th century when some Oxford scholars fled their violent town-gown riots and settled in the fens 53 miles north of London. Beginning in 1284 with Peterhouse, now the smallest college (240 undergraduates), Cambridge has grown to 21 colleges--including rich, intellectual Kings, athletic Jesus and Emmanuel, social (and biggest: more than 800) Trinity, plus Girton and Newnham for the 666 women undergraduates that Cantabs complain are all too few.

The "university" is actually a federation of independent colleges that control their own admissions. Undergraduates dominate Cambridge. Though the number of graduate students has doubled since 1956, it still has only 800 of them. Now this is changing, owing mainly to science. The pattern is clear at the first new men's college to be built at Cambridge in this century: fast-rising Churchill, sponsored by Sir Winston and prodded by his motto, "Forward." At Churchill, 70% of the 540 men will be in science; half will be graduates. Churchill's purpose, says its master. Sir John Cockcroft, "is to increase the output of highly trained scientists and technicians for industry."

The prospect delights British industry, which has so far handed Churchill $8,400,000. It appalls such purist dons as Novelist (Lucky Jim) Kingsley Amis of Peterhouse, who protests that "a university does not exist to serve society, and must never try to do so."

The modern Cambridge freshman does not often resemble the "young buck" Byron, who kept a bear in his rooms at Trinity (dogs were barred). He is generally a public school product on scholarship; traditionalists find him distressingly "professional," the sort of lad who runs an ad agency or nightclub on the side. But today's Cantab still savors yesterday's delights, even to the services of a "gyp," who wakes him in the morning, makes his bed and calls him "sir."

Moreover, he is brighter than ever. With 9,000 students annually clamoring for 2,000 places, Cambridge chooses so carefully that most undergraduates earn an honors B.A. in the standard three years (average failure rate: 2%). How they go about it is strictly their business. There are no required courses; attendance at lectures (except in science) is unfashionable, even at those given by such luminous dons as Critic F. R. Leavis, Historian D. W. Brogan and C. S. (Screwtape Letters) Lewis.

Tutors & Tripos. Cambridge has a free-form atmosphere that boasts, for example, 20 music societies, 9 magazines, 26 religion clubs and 11 political clubs (five left-wing). "Even if it's heretical, you say what you please," says Union Society (debating) President John Gummer.

Such leavening complements the Cantab's only formal assignment: reading on his own for three years in one field as preparation for his tripos--the grueling exams after his second and third years that are named after the three-legged stools on which exam takers once sat. Even this one-field approach is less specialized than it sounds. The reading is prodigious; more than 200 books a year is average. "Natural sciences'' run from anatomy to zoology, not just physics or chemistry alone. "History" includes economics, government and sociology. "English" involves intimacy with Early Irish, Early Welsh, Medieval Latin and modern French, along with the full range of English prose and poetry.

What spurs Cantabs on is the weekly tutorial session: "Two men, two chairs, two pipes and a fire." This mainspring of Cambridge education (as at Oxford) consists of reading aloud and defending an original essay--an experience as unpredictable as the tutor can make it.

"Some tutors adopt shock tactics," wrote one Cantab recently. "As they teach, they change out of dressing gowns into plus fours, shave, fry eggs and bacon, sing snatches from La Traviata, touch their toes, fight imaginary duels; this makes the undergraduate feel at home. Others sit monumentally still and exchange most of their ideas by sign language; they devastate with a frown, reassure with a blink, and get a great deal across by a downward flick of the finger. Others settle their charges in a comfortable chair and trot around the room in a steady harangue."

Two Worlds in One. What this can do to a man is warmly explained by Sir Frank Lee, an old boy (Downing '25) who was elected this month as master of Corpus Christi College. "I was the son of a poor country schoolmaster," he recalls. "Cambridge transformed my life. It revealed new worlds to me." Sir Frank, 59, went on to become one of Britain's top civil servants (Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury). His return symbolizes Cambridge's determination to blend worldly excellence with scholarship. Applauding, the London Times called it "a pity that such appointments are not made with the same frequency in other universities."

Cambridge in fact is trying hard to bridge the "two culture" gap between science and classics that Novelist C. P. Snow first outlined in a Rede lecture at Cambridge in 1959. To the arts tripos may soon be added biology and physics; science students are now attending lectures in art, religion and literature at such a rate that sometimes Cavendish itself is deserted. Delighted at his old school's new agility, Corpus Christi's Lee sums up for all Cantabs: "The glory of Cambridge is that it has always been prepared to adapt itself."

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