Science at Oxbridge

The London Times feared that the upstart invasion might unbalance the ancient fortress of classical learning, and one frosty don complained that another half-thousand bicycles would clog the university town's streets beyond unsnarling. But last week, despite the serious reservations of some scholars, Cambridge University took the first formal step toward the admission of a new residential college, to be devoted chiefly to science. The new college will be named for one of its originators, Sir Winston Churchill.

First master of Churchill College will be Sir John Cockcroft, founder and head of Britain's atomic research center at Harwell. His qualifications are impressive: in 1932, while working at Cambridge under Lord Rutherford, he and Physicist E.T.S. Walton earned a Nobel Prize for pioneer work in splitting lithium atoms. Behind Sir Winston and Sir John in the project are many of Britain's industrial leaders, who have given most of the $8,000,000 already collected toward the $11 million the college is expected to cost. (U.S. firms have also made contributions, and Sir Winston has given $70,000.)

The heated intramural fight waged in the last few months over Churchill College was focused not so much on the influx of scientists--they have swarmed over Cambridge and Oxford since World War II--but much more on the wisdom of enlarging the university and of concentrating scientists in one residential college. Churchill College would add 600 scholars--70% of them scientists--to the 8,500-student university. A hit-or-miss poll of 500 Cantabrigians showed 52% against the addition. Literary Scholar Eustace Tillyard, master of Jesus College, called the plan "pernicious," added with scorn and resignation that ''mere flesh and blood do not reject the bait of a million pounds odd, nor does common human decency care to incur the odium" of insulting Sir Winston. Last week, while opponents kept a sullen silence, invitations were sent to 20 architects to compete for the honor of designing the new seat of science.

With less fuss, Oxford went about its own plans for a $7,000,000 science college. The new institution will take the name of the present, nonresidential St. Catherine's Society, house some 400 scholars. Proposed opening date for St. Catherine's College: October 1961.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.