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Rev. Edward Earle Raven was born on the 27th of December 1889, the son of John E. Raven (a barrister). He was educated at Uppingham School before coming up to Cambridge to study Classics at St John’s College.

Deeply religious, Raven had always been destined for the church, and after his graduation he was ordained in 1914. He briefly worked as an army chaplain and then as Head of Maurice Hostel, before becoming chaplain at the College in 1921. He was awarded a fellowship in 1923, and then become the Dean of College in 1927. He held this post until his death.

Raven married his wife Margaret in 1930, and they had one son and three daughters. He published one book, The Heart of Christ’s Religion, and enjoyed cricket in his spare time. Raven died on the 2nd of December, 1951.

Born on 12th November 1817 in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire to William and Sarah Reyner. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and in 1835 he entered St. John’s College Cambridge. He was a 4th Wrangler in 1839 and became a Fellow of the College in 1840. He then held the position of Sadlerian Lecturer in Mathematics from 1847-57. He was Junior Dean of St. John’s from 1848-1851 and then Senior Bursar from 1857-1876.
Whilst he was Senior Bursar he was one of the people who oversaw the development of the Platt estates in Kentish Town into the general estates of the College. From 1862-1885 more than 700 house leases were granted on the estate, plus shops, a school and All Saints Church. The rents from these estates helped sustain the College through the agricultural depression.
He was also one of the team of people who agreed to the appointment of Gilbert Scott in 1862 to design and construct the new college chapel. The death of Henry Hoare in 1866 caused considerable problems for financing the chapel as Hoare had offered to pay for the chapel tower in installments over his lifetime and he died with only £2,000 paid of the £6,000 the tower was due to cost. Hoare’s son told the College that he would only pay for the tower if the College gave him the living of Staplehurst, where his family lived, to enable his brother to become rector there. The College refused, with the result that they themselves paid for the tower, keeping the Staplehurst living, which Reyner himself took up in 1876. The chapel was consecrated in 1869, coming in vastly over budget.
Reyner was criticised as Bursar by his successors as having allowed the College to engage in reckless expenditure and by inflating the College revenues by doing one-off things (such as the sale of timber from Brookfield Wood) that were not sustainable.
Reyner died in Staplehurst on 16th September 1892, having been the rector of Staplehurst parish for 16 years. He was buried in Staplehurst cemetery.

Vicar of the Church of the Lady Margaret, Walworth, c 1930-1940.

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.

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.

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.

The Reverend Charles Edward Graves was born in London on 11th November 1839, the son of James John, a silk manufacturer. He attended Leamington College and Shrewsbury School, before matriculating at St John’s in 1858. He graduated BA (2nd Classic) in 1862 and was elected a Fellow in 1863; however he had to renounce this position when he married in 1865. Graves was ordained the following year, serving for two years as curate of St Luke’s in Chesterton, and for eight years as chaplain of Magdalene College. Following the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877, which meant that Fellows were no longer required to remain celibate, Graves was re-elected a Fellow in 1893. It was during this stint that he also served as a Tutor, alongside Dr Tanner, from 1895 to 1905.

He was popular while engaged as a private Tutor for Classics, as well as when employed as a lecturer, and was known for his generosity and humour. He died on 21st October 1920, and was survived by his son and four daughters.

Obituary in The Eagle: Vol 42, Lent 1921, p. 57

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.

Simon Swaffield is a Professor of Landscape Architecture. He was admitted to St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1971, graduating in Geography in 1976. He is married to Jenny Moore.
Following experience as a landscape architect and landscape planner in the UK, Swaffield travelled with his wife to New Zealand in 1982 in response to a lecturing position advertised at Lincoln College. They stayed and became New Zealand citizens. He went on to become the programme leader, the foundation head of department, and then in 1988 Swaffield became New Zealand’s first Professor of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University, eventually retiring in 2018.
He serves on several editorial boards of international landscape journals. He also has an affiliate role at the University of Copenhagen and he’s engaged in a number of writing projects with colleagues in New Zealand and internationally.
Swaffield’s research combines insights into the theoretical foundations of landscape architecture with analysis of landscape values, dynamics and governance in NZ production and urban landscapes. His work involves collaborations and comparative studies in both North America and Europe. Over the years his major focus has been helping landscape architecture develop from a scholarly profession into a full university discipline, and it is now an important part of Lincoln’s academic profile. In 2007 he received the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture award for outstanding research and communication. In 2010 he was a Velux Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
He continues to make a major contribution to research into landscape change and the globalisation of local landscapes. He has co-authored and had published a number of books on theory, research, and analysis, which have contributed to landscape education well beyond New Zealand. Swaffield’s publications include: ‘Theory in Landscape Architecture’ (2002); ‘Globalisation and Agricultural Landscapes’ (2010); ‘Landscape Architecture Research’, (2011) and ‘Landscape Analysis’ (2017). He was also the founding editor of the journal ‘Landscape Review’.

William Allen Whitworth was a mathematician and Church of England clergyman. He was born in Runcorn on 1 February 1840. He was the eldest son in the family of four sons and two daughters of William Whitworth and his wife, Susanna Coyne.
He was educated at Sandicroft School, Northwich from 1851-57 and then at St John's College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1858. In 1862 he graduated BA as sixteenth wrangler, he obtained his MA in 1865, and he was fellow of St. John’s College from 1867 to 1884. He was successively chief mathematics master at Portarlington School and Rossall School and professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Liverpool.
Whilst he was an undergraduate he was principal editor, along with Charles Taylor and others, of the Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin Messenger of Mathematics, which was started at Cambridge in November 1861. Whitworth remained one of the editors until 1880, and was a frequent contributor. Whitworth's best-known mathematical work, Choice and Chance, an Elementary Treatise on Permutations, Combinations and Probability (1867), developed from lectures delivered to women at Queen's College, Liverpool, in 1866. A model of clear and simple exposition, it presented a very ample collection of problems on probability and kindred subjects.
Whitworth was ordained deacon in 1865 and priest in 1866, and won high repute in his clerical career. He was the curate at St Anne's, Birkenhead (1865), and of St Luke's, Liverpool (1866–70), and perpetual curate of Christ Church, Liverpool (1870–75). He was vicar of St John the Evangelist, Hammersmith (1875–86), and from November 1886 until his death, vicar of All Saints, Marylebone. He also held a college living from 1885 in the diocese of Bangor, and was in the 1891–2 commissary of the South African diocese of Bloemfontein. Whitworth was select preacher at Cambridge five times and the Hulsean lecturer there in 1903–4. He was made a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in 1900. On 10 June 1885 he married Sarah Louisa Elwes. The couple had four sons, all graduates of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Whitworth, though he had been brought up an evangelical, was influenced at Cambridge by the scholarship of J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott, and he later studied the German rationalizing school of theology. He was considered to be a good and original preacher. His sympathies lay mainly with the high-church party, and in 1875 he joined the English Church Union. His ecclesiastical publications included an almanac of dates of Easter (1882), a description of All Saints Church, Margaret Street (1891); Worship in the Christian Church (1899), and two posthumous volumes of sermons (1906, 1908).
Whitworth died on 12 March 1905 at Home Hospital, Fitzroy Square, London after a serious operation on 28 February. He was buried at on 16 March in ground belonging to St Alban the Martyr, Holborn. There is a slab to his memory in the floor of All Saints Church, Margaret Street.

Francis Puryer White was born in London on 26th October 1893. He was the son of John Francis White, a schoolmaster. He was educated at Stanley Higher Elementary School and then at Owen’s School both in North London. He then entered St. John’s College as a student of mathematics in 1912, gaining a first class in part I of the Mathematics tripos in 1913 and again in Part II in 1915. He was elected in 1916 to the Isaac Newton Studentship in Astronomy and Optical Physics. There followed a short period of war service, from which he returned to St. John’s in 1919, where he was elected a Fellow. He remained a Fellow of St. John’s for the rest of his life. He was appointed a College Lecturer in 1920 and a University Lecturer in 1926 and remained a member of the mathematical teaching staff until he retired in 1961. He was Director of Studies in Mathematics, from 1945 until 1959.
When White returned to Cambridge in 1919 he came increasingly under the influence of H. F. Baker, then Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry. Baker’s real interest was in geometry, and his influence was a primary factor in causing White to devote his energies to geometry rather than astronomy. From 1922 to 1930 White wrote a series of papers on the geometry of conies rational normal curves, and other special plane curves, which were all extremely elegant. But White's main contribution to geometry was his influence on the young men reading mathematics. His enthusiasm for geometry sparked off a similar enthusiasm in others. These were the young men who went on to join the Baker school, which was extremely active from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties. The main activity of this was a seminar, known as " Baker's Saturday tea-party ", which Baker and White presided over in person.
White served on the council of London Mathematical Society from 1923-47. He was Honorary Secretary from 1926-44 and Vice-president from 1944-46. His continuous service of 24 years on the Council of the London Mathematical Society included 18 years as secretary and simultaneously, from 1924 to 1936, he was Mathematical Secretary of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (of which he later became President). In addition to the normal duties in connection with the running of the societies, White did a vast amount of editing of mathematical papers, and his contemporaries were familiar with the sight of him carrying round proof sheets and working on them whenever he had an opportunity. There was less paper work and travelling to London to do during the war, but the responsibility of keeping the Society going during this period fell on him.
But White's services to his University and his College were not limited to mathematics. He was a member of the Cambridge University Press Syndicate continuously from 1931 to 1958, and on the Library Syndicate from 1949 to 1960. He also served on the University Financial Board, and on the Ely Diocesan Board of Finance. He was one of the local secretaries when the British Association met in Cambridge in 1938.
White was dedicated to serving St. John’s College for his whole life. As a regular Chapel-goer, he was active in the affairs of the College Mission, and he served the College in a number of minor offices, including that of Tutorial Bursar. He was also Senior Treasurer of the Committee for the St. John's College Mission at Hoxton from 1921. But his greatest service was in the office of Librarian, which he held from 1948 to 1961. He had always been a collector of early mathematical and scientific books, many of which he later gave to the University Library, and he was well equipped for a librarian's duties. Every aspect of the Library received his loving attention, and his labours to arrange and catalogue vast numbers of documents were unceasing. The College records, particularly the Records of Admissions, claimed his constant attention, and on his retirement under the statutory age limit from the Librarianship, the College fittingly recognised his services by creating for him the special office of Keeper of the College Records.
White was married to Barbara Dale, daughter of Sir Alfred Dale, Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool University, whom he married in 1934. She was for many years Fellow and Bursar of Newnham College. White died on 11th July 1969.

George Fiddes Watt was a portrait painter and engraver. He was born in Aberdeen on 15 February 1873, the only son and the eldest of the five children of George Watt and his wife, Jean Frost. On leaving school at fourteen, he was apprenticed to a firm of lithographic printers in Aberdeen. During these next seven years he also attended evening classes at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen.
At the age of twenty-one Watt went to Edinburgh to study in the life class of the Royal Scottish Academy. For a time he struggled to make ends meet, but through exhibiting his paintings at the academy from 1897 he soon obtained small commissions, particularly for portraits of local dignitaries such as Provost Smith of Peterhead (1901) and Provost Wallace of Tain (1908). When commissions continued to come in steadily, he began renting a large studio at 178 Cromwell Road and exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
In 1903 Watt married Jean Willox, art teacher at Peterhead Academy, and youngest daughter of William Willox of Park, a farmer in the Buchan area of Aberdeenshire. They had three sons and a daughter.
He first began to attract attention with a number of portraits of women, including one of his wife which was his first exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1906. A portrait of his mother painted in 1910 was later bought out of the Chantrey bequest for the Tate Gallery in 1930.
Watt's later reputation, however, rests on his portraits of men. He was interested in strong character, expressed with vigour and freedom of handling. His most vital works probably date from before the First World War and he is seen at his best, for example, in the series of senior legal figures at the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh: Lord Salvesen (1911), Lord Kingsburgh (1912), and Lord Dundas (1916).
Watt's work is regarded as being in the Scottish tradition stemming from Henry Raeburn, with its unaffected simplicity and robust directness of handling. He was much in demand in both Scotland and England for official portraits and painted, among others, Herbert Henry Asquith and Lord Loreburn (both 1912) for Balliol College, Oxford; Cosmo Gordon Lang (1914) for All Souls, Oxford; Arthur James Balfour (1919) for Eton College; Lord Ullswater (1922) for the House of Commons; Sir Joseph Thomson (1923) for Trinity College, Cambridge and Robert Forsyth Scott (1913) for St. John’s College, Cambridge.
After 1930 he ceased exhibiting at the Royal Academy and painted less and less as his eyesight had started to fail. He had been elected an associate (1910) and a full member (1924) of the Royal Scottish Academy and his last exhibit there was in 1941.
In 1940, when the bombing of London became severe, Watt retired to Cults, near Aberdeen. In 1955 the University of Aberdeen awarded him the honorary degree of LLD and late in life he was granted a civil-list pension. His wife died in 1956 and her death was a severe blow to him. In his later years, he became a well-known figure in Aberdeen, with his Vandyke beard, wearing a deer stalking cap, and carrying a long shepherd's crook. Fiddes Watt died at his home in Aberdeen, on 22 November 1960. His work is represented in most Scottish collections, including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, which has four paintings. A bronze statue of Watt by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, made in 1942, is in Aberdeen.