List of alumni of St John's College, Cambridge

Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort, foundress

The following is a list of notable people educated at St John's College, Cambridge. When available, years of attendance are provided as indicated in the College Register or in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Over 1000 former members of St John's College appear in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.^[1]

Politics, Military, and the Civil Service

John Cheke, Secretary of State, 1553
Roger Ascham, tutor of Elizabeth I and advisor to Edward VI and Mary I
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, Lord High Treasurer, 1572–98, and chief advisor to Elizabeth I
Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer, 1599-1608
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Lord High Treasurer, 1608–12, Secretary of State, 1590-12
Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, Lord High Treasurer, 1614-18
Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, leading advisor to Charles I, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1633-41
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, Secretary of State, 1642-43
Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, Lord High Treasurer, 1660-67
John Duncombe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1672-76
Francis North, 1st Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper, 1682-85
Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey, Secretary of State 1699-1700 (South)
James Vernon, Secretary of State 1697-1700 (North) and 1700-2 (South)
John Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1718-21
Thomas Thynne, 1st Marquess of Bath, Secretary of State, 1768–70 & 1775–79 (South), 1768 & 1779 (North)
Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, Speaker of the House of Commons, 1770-80
Thomas Clarkson, abolitionist and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire
Charles Philip Yorke, Home Secretary, 1803-04, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1810-12
Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1804-5
Richard Ryder, Home Secretary, 1809-12
William Wilberforce, Member of Parliament and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1812–22
Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1829-30, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 1840-47
Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 2nd Earl of Minto, Lord Privy Seal, 1846-52, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1835–1841
Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1841-44
Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Privy Seal, 1842-46
George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1853-58, 1865-66, 1868-70
Sir William Molesworth, 8th Baronet, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1855
Suematsu Kenchō, Japanese Minister of Home Affairs, 1900-01
Sir James Allen, Finance Minister of New Zealand, 1912-15
Yoshirō Fujimura, Japanese Minister of Communications, 1924, Director of Mitsui & Co.
Nawab Mohammad Ismail Khan, President of the All-India Muslim League, 1930–47
Sir Percy James Grigg, Secretary of State for War, 1942-45
Akhter Husain, Governor of West Pakistan, 1957-60
Sir Percy Cradock, British Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, 1978-83
Sir Robin McLaren, British Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, 1991-94
Fra' Matthew Festing, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, 2008-

Prime Ministers

Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (briefly admitted), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1765-66 & 1782^[2]
F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1827–28
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1852–55
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1855–58 & 1859–65
Alfred Domett, Prime Minister of New Zealand, 1862–63
Sir Francis Bell, Prime Minister of New Zealand, 1925
Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, 2004-2014

Military and Colonial Administrators

Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, parliamentary general and commander-in-chief in the English Civil War
William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, general and major supporter of Charles I in the English Civil War
Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, Admiral of the Fleet, Lord High Admiral, 1638–43
Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford, Admiral of the Fleet, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1694-99, 1709-10, and 1714-17
George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend, Field Marshal, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1767-72
Richard Penn, Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, 1771-73
Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, Lieutenant-General during the American Revolutionary War
John Cradock, 1st Baron Howden, General, Governor of the Cape Colony, 1811-14
Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough, Governor-General of India, 1842-44
Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland, Admiral, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1852
Hugh Rose, 1st Baron Strathnairn, Field Marshal
Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, 1907-08
Thomas Gibson-Carmichael, 1st Baron Carmichael, Governor of Victoria, 1908-11
Sir Harry Edward Spiller Cordeaux, Governor of Saint Helena, 1912-20, and Governor of Uganda, 1910-11
Sir Thomas Snow, Lieutenant-General during WWI
Sir Fraser Russell, Governor of Southern Rhodesia, 1934-35, 1942, and 1946
Hugh Foot, Baron Caradon, Governor of Cyprus, 1957-60, and Governor of Jamaica, 1951-57
Sir Roger Palin, Air Chief Marshal
Sir Andrew Ridgway, Lieutenant-General, Lieutenant Governor of Jersey, 2006-11

Current Members of Parliament

Nigel Dodds, Deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party
Ben Gummer
Robert Jenrick

Current Members of the House of Lords

Justice

Edmund Anderson, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 1583-1605
Robert Heath, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1642-45
Humphrey Winch, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, 1608-11
Robert Booth, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, 1679-80
Sir Codrington Edmund Carrington, 1st Chief Justice of Ceylon, 1801-06
Thomas Denman, 1st Baron Denman, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1832–50
William Martin, Chief Justice of New Zealand, 1841-57
Edward Marshall Hall, Victorian era barrister known as "The Great Defender"
Wee Chong Jin, Chief Justice of Singapore, 1963–90
Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim, Attorney-General of Singapore, 1965-67
Maharaj Nagendra Singh, President of the International Court of Justice, 1985-88
Walter Woon, Attorney-General of Singapore, 2008-10
Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee, (1899-1981), advocate in Bombay High Court, 1st Indian ambassador to Egypt, Vice-Chancellor of University of Jammu and Kashmir
Glanville Williams, Q.C. LL.D. F.B.A. described in 1997 by the New York Times as the greatest lawyer of the 20th century
Stanley Berwin, one of the leading lawyers of the second half of the 20th century

Science, mathematics, and technology

Brook Taylor, an English mathematician who is best known for Taylor's theorem and the Taylor series

Chris Abel, Professor of Biological Chemistry at Cambridge
John Couch Adams, mathematician and discoverer of Neptune
Bernard Armitage, fellow of the College and psychiatrist
George Barnard, statistician known for his work on the foundations of statistics
Sir David Cox, prominent statistician
Sir Samuel Curran, physicist, inventor of the scintillation counter and proportional counter, and founder of Strathclyde University
John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I
Fearon Fallows, astronomer
Thomas Fink, physicist and author
William Gilbert, physician and natural philosopher, discoverer of the Earth's magnetic field and inventor of the word 'electricity'
Johannes de Villiers Graaff, economist
William Gregor, discoverer of titanium
William D. Hamilton, evolutionary biologist who formalised the concept of kin selection
David Harvey, Marxist geographer, social scientist
William Heberden, British physician, gave the first clinical description (1768) of angina pectoris and demonstrated that chicken pox was different from smallpox
John Herschel, mathematician and astronomer
W. E. Hick, pioneer of cognitive science and discoverer of Hick's law
Robert Hinde, Professor of Zoology, and former Master of St. John's
Sir Fred Hoyle, pioneering but controversial cosmologist who first used the term 'Big Bang'
James Jago, scientist and physician
Sir Harold Jeffreys, applied mathematician and geophysicist
Joseph Larmor, mathematician and physicist
Louis Leakey, archaeologist and naturalist credited with the discovery of Homo habilis
John Marrack, immunologist
Alfred Marshall, economist
Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine
Sir Roger Penrose, mathematical physicist and philosopher
Cedric Price, architect
Vikram Sarabhai, father of the Indian space programme
David Stoddart OBE, biogeographer
James Joseph Sylvester, mathematician
Brook Taylor, mathematician
Sir Maurice Wilkes, one of the founding fathers of modern computer science, and inventor of the first stored program digital computer
John Tuzo Wilson, geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics

Nobel Prize winners

Sir Edward Appleton, winner of the Nobel prize for Physics, for discovering the Appleton layer
Sir John Cockcroft KCB, Nobel prize-winning physicist who first split the atom
Allan Cormack, Nobel laureate in Medicine or Physiology for the invention of the CAT scan
Paul Dirac, Nobel laureate in Physics and one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics
Sir Nevill Francis Mott, awarded Nobel prize for Physics for work on the behaviour of electrons in magnetic solids
Abdus Salam, Nobel laureate in Physics, for unifying the electromagnetic force and the weak force
Frederick Sanger, molecular biologist and one of only four double Nobel Prize winners
Maurice Wilkins, awarded Nobel prize for Medicine or Physiology with Watson and Crick for discovering the structure of DNA

Paul Dirac, the discoverer of antimatter, attended St John's College from 1923, winning the Nobel prize for Physics in 1933
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atom

Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the atom
Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine
Frederick Sanger, the fourth person to win two Nobel Prizes
John Dee, consultant to Queen Elizabeth, attended St John's College

Arts and literature

Douglas Adams, author
John Gardner, author
John Andrews, crime and antiques writer
Sir Cecil Beaton, renowned photographer, Academy Award winner
Patrick Brontë, father of the Brontë sisters
Samuel Butler, author
Louis Cha, Chinese novelist and newspaper editor
Jennifer Egan, author, winner of 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction
Colin Gardner, film and media studies theorist, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Robert Greene, arguably the first professional English author of plays, poems and novels
Thomas Nashe, pamphleteer, satirist and playwright
Frederic Raphael, screenwriter, novelist and journalist
Tom Rob Smith, award nominee author of Soviet-era novels; erstwhile writer for Channel 5's defunct soap opera Family Affairs
Paul Sussman, author, archaeologist and journalist
Andrew Gilligan, controversial journalist
Frederic Raphael, received Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, 1965
Robert Stevenson, nominated for Academy Award for Best Director, 1964
Sir Hugh Casson, president of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1974-84

Poets

Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), courtier and poet
John Hall, poet
Edward Benlowes, poet
William Mason, poet
Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet, poet
Erasmus Darwin, poet and abolitionist
Robert Herrick, author of renowned poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"
William Wordsworth, major English Romantic poet and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, 1843-50
William Barnes, poet
T. E. Hulme, poet
Richard Eberhart, poet, winner of 1966 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, United States Poet Laureate, 1969-61

Musicians

William Sterndale Bennett, 19th-century composer
Andrew Carwood, Director of Music St Paul's Cathedral (2007), tenor and conductor
Andrew Gant, chorister and composer
George Guest, Welsh choral conductor, college organist 1951–91
Herbert Howells, English composer, college organist
Geoffrey Paterson, conductor, college organist
John Scott, LVO, English organist, organ scholar 1974–78, organist of St Paul's 1990–2004
Harry Gregson-Williams, film score composer and Golden Globe nominee
Rupert Gregson-Williams, film score composer and recipient of the European Film composer award

Thomas Wyatt attended St John's College
Samuel Butler attended St John's College from 1854
Jennifer Egan attended St John's College from 1985
Harry Gregson-Williams attended St John's College

Harry Gregson-Williams attended St John's College
Richard Eberhart attended St John's College
Cecil Beaton attended St John's College

Religion

Thomas Gilbank Ackland, clergyman and domestic chaplain to the Duke of York
Haslefoot Bridges, Puritan minister
William Cassels, missionary and member of the Cambridge Seven
D'Ewes Coke, clergyman and colliery master
Edmund Hickeringill, churchman
William Higton, clergyman and philanthropist
William Jowett, missionary
Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia
William Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff and Bishop of St Asaph and Welsh Bible translator
Edmund Prys, Welsh Bible translator and clergyman
Edward Stillingfleet, British theologian and scholar
John Thomlinson, clergyman and diarist
Richard Vaughan, Bishop of Bangor 1595-97, Bishop of Chester 1597-1604, Bishop of London 1604-07
John Colenso, Bishop of Natal, 1853-83

Roman Catholic saints and cardinals

Saint Richard Gwyn, martyr
Saint Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, martyr
Saint John Fisher (Fellow and Founder), martyr and cardinal
Philip Howard, cardinal

Anglican archbishops

Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, 1577-88
John Williams, Archbishop of York, 1641–50, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, 1621–25
Richard Neile, Archbishop of York, 1631–40
Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1974–1980
Richard Boyle, Archbishop of Tuam, 1638-45
John Cradock, Archbishop of Dublin, 1772-78
William Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh, 1800-22
George Selwyn, Primate and 1st bishop of New Zealand, 1841-67
Lowther Clarke, Archbishop of Melbourne, 1905-20
Harrington Lees, Archbishop of Melbourne, 1921-29
Gerald Sharp, Archbishop of Brisbane, 1921–33
Peter Carnley, Primate of Australia 2000–05, Archbishop of Perth 1981–2005

Academics

Frank Horton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of London 1939–45
Andrew D. Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, 2009-15, President of New York University, 2016-
William Richard Hamilton, President of the Royal Geographical Society
Sir James Wordie, President of the Royal Geographical Society
Sir Vivian Fuchs, President of the Royal Geographical Society
Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston, 1st Baronet, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1918-20
Owen Chadwick, church historian, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 1969-71
Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1909-20
Livingston Farrand, President of Cornell University, 1921-37
Kikuchi Dairoku, Japanese Minister of Education, 1901-3, President of Tokyo University, 1898-01, and Kyoto University, 1908-12
Sir Thomas Watson, 1st Baronet, President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1862-66
Max Rosenheim, President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1966-71
Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia
Peter Hennessy, English historian of government
Sir Harry Hinsley, historian and World War II codebreaker
Edward Latymer, founder of Latymer Upper School and The Latymer School
Sir Donald MacAlister, physician and chancellor of the University of Glasgow
Tshilidzi Marwala, academic and businessman
Sir Peter Noble, Principal of King's College London 1952–1968
E. J. Rapson, numismatist and professor of Sanskrit (1906-36) at the University of Cambridge
John Stevens Henslow English clergyman, botanist and geologist
Thomas Sutton, founder of Charterhouse School and one of 16th-century England's wealthiest individuals
Stephen Sykes, theologian, former Dean of St John's and Bishop of Ely, and principal of St John's College, Durham
Frank Thistlethwaite, Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (1961–1980)