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Born Francesco della Rovere, Pope Sixtus IV held papal office from 1471 until his death in 1484. Raised in the Italian region of Liguria, Francesco studied at the University of Padua and, as a young man, became a member of the Franciscan Order. He served as Minister General of the Order from 1464 to 1469 and as Cardinal-priest of San Pietro in Vincoli from 1467 to 1471. As Pope, Sixtus was a patron of both the arts and sciences – the Sistine Chapel in Rome was famously restored during his time in office – yet his papacy was also characterised by nepotism and rumours of sexual scandal.

Simpson was a student at St. John’s College, matriculating in 1971. He was a contemporary and friend of Douglas Adams. Adams and Simpson shared rooms along with Nick Barton in Adams’ third year. The character of Zaphod Beeblebrox from 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' was based, according to Adams' own account on Simpson.

Edward Ernest Sikes was born on the 26th April, 1867, in Kent, and educated at Aldenham School. At the end of 1885, he was awarded a scholarship at St John’s College, where he would also go on to win a Brown Medal and achieve first place in the First Class in Part I of the Classical Tripos of 1889. He later went out to study at the British School at Athens, before being elected to a Fellowship in 1891.
Sikes’ career at St John’s continued when the next year he was awarded the title of Assistant Lecturer; and, then, Lecturer, a position which he held from 1894 to 1938. He became a Tutor in 1900, a task which he undertook for the next twenty-five years.
When not teaching, Sikes was also a prolific author, publishing works such as Roman Poetry, The Greek View of Poetry, and a translation of Hero and Leander. He was also known to enjoy football, cricket, and music; Sikes was a Chairman of the Smoking Concerts, and President of the musical society.
Sikes remained at St John’s for almost all of the rest of his life, with the exclusion of a brief tenure as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. He died at Bournemouth, on the 5th February 1940.

Obituary in the Eagle: Vol. 52, Mich 1941, p. 43.
Accessible online at: https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Eagle/Eagle%20Volumes/1940s/1942/Eagle_1941_Michaelmas.pdf

Robert Shorton was the first Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, from its foundation in 1511 to Shorton’s resignation in 1516. A scholar of Jesus College, Cambridge, Shorton graduated M.A. (1503), D.D. (1511-12). He was elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall in 1505 and later served as Master there, from 1518 to 1534. Shorton was also Almoner to Queen Catherine of Aragon and supported her cause in convocation. Among his many clerical appointments, he served as Canon of Windsor (1527-35) and Archdeacon of Bath (1534-35). He was appointed Master of Stoke-by-Clare College, Suffolk, in 1529 and was buried there after his death in October 1535.

Dr. Lewis Erle Shore was a prominent physiologist and neurologist. He was born in Churcham, Gloucestershire in 1863. He was the second son of archaeologist T.W. Shore.
He was educated at Southampton Grammar School and Hartley College. Shore came to St John's College in 1882, graduated BA in 1884, and gained a First Class in Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1885. He then entered St. Bartholomew’s hospital and he graduated in medicine in 1887. In 1887 Shore was awarded his MB and BChir, and his MD followed in 1891.
Shore was a Fellow of St John's from 1890 until his death, and served as Junior Bursar of the College from 1901 to 1933. He was University Demonstrator in Physiology, 1887-1896, and University Lecturer in Physiology, 1896-1930. He contributed a number of articles to the ‘Journal of Physiology’ on various subjects including peptone, gaseous metabolism of the liver and the effects of chloroform. He also co-wrote, alongside Sir Michael Foster, a popular textbook: ‘Physiology for beginners’ which reached a second edition in 1913.
Shore also served on the staff of the 1st Eastern General Hospital at Cambridge from 1916-19 where he specialised in caring for the neurological patients. He was made an OBE in 1919. At the annual meeting of the BMA held in Cambridge in 1920 he was vice-president of the section of Neurology and Psychiatry. He died on July 27th 1944 in Bath.

Sir Ralph Shirley was the husband of Lady Anne Shirley, daughter of Sir Henry Vernon of Haddon, Derbyshire. He served as Sheriff of Leicestershire and as bailiff to Lady Margaret Beaufort at Ware.

Admitted fellow-commoner 1702. Matric. 1705; M.A. 1705. Admitted as a student to the Middle Temple, 1701/2. Called to the Bar 1710.

Philip Malcolm Shaw was born in Huddersfield in 1921. He was educated at Royds Hall and Manchester Grammar Schools, before coming up to Cambridge in 1939 as a member of St John’s College. He completed his B.A. in Natural Sciences in 1942, and would go on to pursue postgraduate study at University College London after the Second World War. However, immediately after his graduation he worked in the chemical industry at Grangemouth for the duration of the war. Shaw continued in his career as a chemical engineer, becoming managing director and then director of various companies, until his retirement. He then moved to the Lake District.

Shaw died in 2003.

Sarah was the daughter of Edward Alston of London, physician, President of the College of Physicians, who was knighted by King Charles II at the Restoration in 1660, and his wife Susanna, daughter of Christopher Hudson of Norwich and widow of Jasper Hussey, fishmonger of Billingsgate. Sarah married in 1652 George Grimston, son of barrister and politician Sir Harbottle Grimston. George Grimston died three years later and their two children died in infancy. Sarah married, secondly, Lord John Seymour, son and heir of the second Duke of Somerset. Unlike her first marriage, this was a marriage of convenience by which Seymour benefitted financially and Sir Edward gained entrance into the circle of the aristocracy; it was an unhappy match. Her marriage settlement did allow for a measure of financial independence, with £300 per annum set aside for her sole use, a wise precaution given the Somerset family's financial difficulties and her husband's gambling addiction. Following Somerset's death in 1675, Sarah was permitted to retain her title and her control of her late husband's estates in Herefordshire. In 1682 she married Henry Hare, second Baron Coleraine, again through the marriage settlement retaining some financial autonomy. She died in 1692.

William Selwyn was born on 19th February 1806. He was a Church of England clergyman, canon of Ely Cathedral, Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, and an amateur astronomer.
Selwyn was the eldest surviving son of William Selwyn and his wife Laetitia Kynaston.
He was educated at Eton College from 1823 and St John's College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1824. In 1826 he won all the Browne medals and he was also Craven scholar. He graduated in 1828 as sixth wrangler, and also senior classic and first chancellor's medallist. His subsequent degrees were MA in 1831, BD in 1850, and DD in 1864.
In March 1829 Selwyn was made a fellow of St John's, and in the same year gained the Norrisian prize. He was ordained deacon by the bishop of Ely in 1829 and priest by the bishop of Rochester in 1831. In 1831 he became the rector of Branstone, Leicestershire. He married Juliana Elizabeth Cooke in 1832.
In 1846 he became vicar of Melbourne, Cambridgeshire, in the chapter of Ely and he remained in that post until 1853. In 1833 he was made a canon residentiary of Ely, an office which he retained until his death. He was also elected to the Lady Margaret’s professorship of divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1855.
He insisted on setting apart out of his own income the yearly sum of £700 for the endowment of the Norrisian professorship and after that for furthering the study of theology in Cambridge.
In 1857 he was appointed Ramsden preacher and in 1859 was chaplain-in-ordinary to the queen. He served on the committee to revise the Authorized Version of the Old Testament. He was honorary joint curator of Lambeth Library from 1872, and president of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1867. Selwyn published letters, speeches, sermons, and works on Old Testament criticism.
One of Selwyn’s major concerns was the position of the cathedral in the church. He questioned the centralizing tendency of the ecclesiastical commission, and its emphasis upon the parish, publishing a pamphlet in 1840 entitled 'An Attempt to investigate the True Principles of Cathedral Reform'. He believed in the capability of the church to reform itself through its councils. In 1852 he was named a member of the cathedrals commission, and the report of 1854 was understood to be largely his work. He was also the moving cause of the rebuilding of his own college chapel at St. John’s, for which purpose funds had been accumulating under the bequest of a late master.
Selwyn was also a keen astronomer and whilst at Ely he established an observatory in an area of the cathedral precincts. In collaboration with John Persehouse Titterton, a local photographer, he prepared a series of photographs of the solar disc over an entire sunspot cycle from 1863 to 1874 using a six-inch achromatic lens. The prints were donated to the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Selwyn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1866. He was also an elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In Michaelmas term 1866, when riding along the Trumpington Road, he was thrown from his horse. He never wholly recovered from the effects of the fall and died at Vine Cottage, Cambridge, on 24 April 1875. He was buried at Ely cathedral and has a monument there.

Elizabeth Scrope (née Neville) was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1464. She was the daughter of Sir John de Neville, Earl of Northumberland, and Isabel Neville Norreys. Elizabeth married her first husband, Thomas le Scrope, 6th Lord Scrope of Masham, in 1486. She married her second husband, Sir Henry Wentworth, in 1494, following the death of her first husband in 1493. Elizabeth was widowed again after the death of Sir Henry c.1500. She died in 1517 and was buried beside Thomas le Scrope at Ludgate, London.

Robert Forsyth Scott was born on 28 July 1849, at St Thomas Manse, Leith, Edinburgh. He was the eldest son of the Rev. George Scott and his wife, Mary (daughter of Robert Forsyth). He was baptised on 16th August 1849, and was educated at High School, Edinburgh, and then in Stuttgart and London before being admitted pensioner to St John's College in 1871. At St John's he was elected to a scholarship in 1873, after which he obtained his BA (4th Wrangler, 1875), MA (1878), before being elected to a fellowship in 1877, which he retained until 1908. He was Assistant Master at Christ's Hospital 1877-9. Scott then went on to study law, being admitted to Lincoln's Inn in December 1876 and then being called to the Bar in 1880. He was Junior Proctor to the University 1887-8 and Senior Bursar for St John's College 1888-1908, before being elected to the office of Master following the death of Charles Taylor in 1908. He also served the office of Vice-Chancellor for the period 1910-12, and received the honorary degree of LL.D. at St Andrews. In 1922 he became a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and in 1924 he received the honour of Knighthood.

During the course of his career he had several important publications, which included the History of St John's College in 1907, and many papers on the College History. His recreational interests included rowing, as well as antiquarian and biographical pursuits. In 1898 he married Jenny Webster, the daughter of General Thomas Edward Webster. Robert Forsyth Scott died on 18th November 1933, at Cambridge.

Fellow of God's House, Cambridge, (re-established as Christ's College in 1505) and Junior Proctor from 1510 to 1511.

George Gilbert Scott was a British architect in the Victorian era, famous for his revival of an English Gothic style and for his prodigious output and work ethic. By his death in 1878 he had been involved with over 879 architectural projects.
Scott was born on 13 July 1811 in Gawcott, Buckinghamshire. He was the third son of the Revd Thomas Scott (1780–1835) and Euphemia Lynch (1785–1853).
Scott was educated first at home and then, for a year, at Latimers, near Chesham, Buckinghamshire. Scott's father recognized in his son's love of sketching medieval churches a predilection for architecture and encouraged his son in that direction.
Scott finished an architectural pupillage with James Edmeston in 1831 and then worked for the contractors Grissell and Peto, gaining practical experience. In 1832 Scott entered the office of the architect Henry Roberts (1803–1876), who was then working on the Fishmongers' Hall by London Bridge.
The sudden death of his father at the beginning of 1835 prompted Scott to set up in practice on his own. He invited William Bonython Moffatt (1812–1887) whom he had met in Edmeston's office, to assist him and between them, they secured a considerable number of commissions in the local competitions for workhouses. Scott entered into a formal partnership with Moffatt in 1838, and the firm of Scott and Moffatt built a considerable number of workhouses and asylums. They also won competitions to design Reading gaol and the Infant Orphan Asylum at Wanstead, Essex.
In 1838 Scott married his cousin Caroline Oldrid (1811–1872), with whom he had five sons. Mrs Scott soon became anxious to end her husband's partnership with Moffatt who was irresponsible, extravagant and dangerously involved in railway speculation. The partnership was eventually terminated at the end of 1846.
Scott was heavily influenced by the Gothic revivalist ideals of Cambridge Camden Society in its journal, The Ecclesiologist, and by the architect A. W. N. Pugin. This was demonstrated in his design for the martyrs' memorial at Oxford and in that for the rebuilding of the church of St Giles's, Camberwell, London and of the St Nikolaikirche in Hamburg in 1845.
Other significant churches by Scott include: All Souls', Haley Hill, Halifax, which was built in 1856–9; All Saints', Sherbourne, Warwickshire (1859–64); All Saints', Ryde, Isle of Wight (1866–82); St Mary Abbots, Kensington, London (1868–79); and St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh, begun in 1874 and completed by his son J. O. Scott. Scott also worked in universities and was responsible for the chapels at Exeter College, Oxford (1854–60), King’s College, London (1861-2) and St John's College, Cambridge (1862–9).
Scott was appointed architect for the Foreign Office in November 1858 but Scott's new Gothic design was rejected. He was forced, after a long drawn out negotiations and disagreements to produce an Italian classical design with a picturesque front facing St James's Park. The new design was accepted by parliament in July 1861 and the work was completed in 1874.
Scott was able to use the horizontally composed secular Gothic manner he had originally proposed for the Foreign Office in his winning design of 1865–6 for the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station. Other important secular works carried out during the decade included the Albert Institute in Dundee, Leeds Infirmary, and new buildings for the University of Glasgow and the University of Bombay.
Scott was chosen to design the Albert monument in Hyde Park. By uniting sculpture and architecture and by combining marble, stone, bronze, enamel, and metal, Scott succeeded in realizing the widest ideals of the Gothic revival. Upon completion of the monument in 1872, Scott was knighted by Queen Victoria —styling himself Sir Gilbert Scott.
Much of Scott's practice consisted of the restoration of old churches, both medieval and of later date. Scott's first restoration was of Chesterfield church, which was soon followed by that of St Mary's, Stafford. Scott's first cathedral restoration was Ely, where he was appointed surveyor in 1847. Others soon followed, and eventually Scott was involved with almost every medieval cathedral in England and Wales, whether advising on restoration or designing new furnishings. In 1849 he succeeded Edward Blore as surveyor to Westminster Abbey. He published the results of his enthusiastic researches in 1861 in 'Gleanings from Westminster Abbey' which he edited.
Scott wrote a number of books including 'Plea for the Faithful Restoration of our Ancient Churches', published in 1850 and 'Personal and Professional Recollections' which was one of the first autobiographies of an architect to be published. In 1857 Scott published his 'Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, Present and Future', which argued that a Gothic Renaissance need could encompass modern improvements such as plate glass and cast iron.
In addition to his books, Scott wrote lengthy reports on the ancient cathedrals and churches he was invited to restore as well as numerous published letters, articles, and lectures. From 1857 until 1873 he gave lectures at the Royal Academy, where he was appointed professor of architecture in 1868. Scott was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1855 and Royal Academician in 1860.
Scott fell dangerously ill in 1870 with heart disease and bronchitis, and he increasingly relied on his second son, John Oldrid to complete his work. He was still capable of fine things in such works as the Hook Memorial Church at Leeds (1876–1880) and St Mary's Homes at Godstone, Surrey (1872). Scott served as president of the RIBA from 1873 until 1876; he had been awarded the institute's royal gold medal in 1859. Sir Gilbert Scott died of heart failure on 27 March 1878 at Courtfield House. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

John Sante was elected as abbot of Abingdon on 29 November 1468. It is not known when and where he was born, nor at what point he entered the Abingdon Abbey as a Benedictine monk. From 1468 onwards, however, Sante was active in a number of important diplomatic and administrative assignments, both on behalf of the English crown and, from the mid-1470s, the papal curia. He was made papal nuncio and commissary to England, Ireland and Wales, and in 1477, appointed to the highest rank of papal legate by Pope Sixtus IV. Sante served both Edward IV and Henry VII of England, but in 1489, was accused of conspiracy against the king in having sought to further the rebellion of John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, two years earlier. As a result of this, Sante’s property as abbot was confiscated. He was pardoned in 1493.

Sir John Sandys was born in May 1844 in Leicester, to the Reverend Timothy of Calcutta and Rebecca. He came into residence at St John’s in Michaelmas Term 1863. He obtained many awards during his studies including the Bell scholarship at the end of his first year of study, Browne Medal and Porson Prize in 1865, the Porson Prize for a second time the following year, Members’ Prize in 1866 and 1867, before graduating BA as Senior Classic in 1867. The same year, he was elected to the Fellowship, and he was to remain a Fellow until his death. He served as a College tutor for 30 years between 1870 and 1900, and as Public Orator for the University between 1876 and his retirement in 1919.
Sandys wrote a number of books on classical subjects, most notably a 'History of Classical Scholarship'. Published in three volumes between 1903 and 1908, it still remains a valuable reference guide. Sandys married Mary Grainger in 1880, was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1909 and died in 1922. He was a generous benefactor to the College, and also bequeathed a sum of money to the University to found a studentship.

Obituary in The Eagle: Vol. 43, Michaelmas Term 1922, p. 15