University of Cambridge

         The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University or simply Cambridge) is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, Cambridge is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's fourth-oldest surviving university.The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople.The two ancient universities share many common features and are often jointly referred to as "Oxbridge".

Cambridge is consistently ranked as one of the world's best universities.The university has educated many notable alumni, including eminent mathematicians, scientists, politicians, lawyers, philosophers, writers, actors, and foreign Heads of State. Ninety-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cambridge as students, faculty, staff or alumni.

Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 constituent colleges and over 100 academic departments organised into six schools.Cambridge University Press, a department of the university, is the world's oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world.The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, and a botanic garden. Cambridge's libraries hold a total of around 15 million books, eight million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library. Throughout its history, the university has featured in literature and artistic works by numerous authors including Geoffrey Chaucer, E. M. Forster and C. P. Snow.

In the year ended 31 July 2015, the university had a total income of £1.638 billion, of which £397 million was from research grants and contracts.The central university and colleges have a combined endowment of around £5.89 billion, the largest of any university outside the United States.The university is closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster known as "Silicon Fen".

By the late 12th century, the Cambridge region already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. However, it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have formed the establishment of the university: two Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, who would normally take precedence (and pardon the scholars) in such a case, but were at that time in conflict with the King John. The University of Oxford went into suspension in protest, and most scholars moved to cities such as Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. After the University of Oxford reformed several years later, enough scholars remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of the new university.In order to claim precedence, it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from King Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members (ius non-trahi extra) and an exemption from some taxes. (Oxford would not receive a similar enhancement until 1248.)

A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach "everywhere in Christendom".After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290,and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318,it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.

The colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.

Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college (it was previously an "Approved Society" affiliated with the university).