Silent Sunday Cemetery Scapes ~ Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge

Nobel Laureate ~ John Cockcroft

John 

Douglas Cockcroft

O.M K.C.B C.B.E Sc.D F.R.S

First Master of

Churchill College

27th May 1897

18th Sept 1967

Whose love was his strength

Timothy

son of John

and Elizabeth Cockcroft

Jan 26th 1927 Oct 11th 1929

Elizabeth

Beloved Wife

Loving Mother

Oct 26th 1898

Aug 4th 1989

John Douglas Cockcroft was a British Physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for splitting the Atomic Nucleus with Ernest Walton in 1951. Cockcroft was instrumental in the development of Nuclear Power.

John was born on 27th May 1897 at Todmorden, W.Yorkshire, England. His family had been Cotton Manufacturers for several generations.

He studied mathematics at Manchester University in 1914 and served as a Signaller in the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. He then returned to Manchester and studied electrical engineering and after an apprenticeship with Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Co. he went to St. John's College Cambridge and took the Mathematical Tripos in 1924 and became a Fellow of St.John's in 1929.

In 1925 he married Eunice Elizabeth Crabtree and had six children, John Haslam ~ known as Timothy was born 29th January 1927 ~ 86 years ago today, but died at the age of two years old. He is buried with his Father and Mother in the Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge.

John and Elizabeth had four daughters and another son. 

He worked on the acceleration of protons in 1928 and was joined by Ernest Walton. 

In 1929 he became a Fellow at St.John's and in 1939, Jacksonian Professor of Philosophy.

In that same year he took a war~time appointment as Assistant of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply and started work on Radar to Coast and Air Defence problems. After which he was appointed Head of the Air Defence Research and Development Establishment.

In 1944 he went to Canada and took charge of the Canadian Atomic Energy Project and returned to England in 1946 as Director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. From 1954 to 1959 he was scientific research member of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.

In 1959 he became First Master at Churchill College, Cambridge and Chancellor of the Australian National University, Canberra. From 1960 to 1962 he was President of the Institute of Physics, the Physical Society and that of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1961 to 1963.

John Cockcroft recieved honorary doctorates from some 19 Universities and a fellow or honorary member of many Principal Scientific Societies.        

Wednesday's Child

Multiply Upon Him The

Blessings of Thy Love

John Spens

Born May 1st 1913

Died February 13th 1914

I was rather excited about this recent find in the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, because I have not seen a relief of a baby wrapped in swaddling bands like this before.
Also I believe that the circular crosses in the corners of the headstone represent Canterbury Cross, which are used by the Anglican Church, and this Burial ground was formerly that of St.Gile's and St. Peter's Parish.

 

What the Ivy Revealed

I love the Gothic atmosphere, that Ivy running wild can bring to the monuments in an old cemetery. It seems to add it's own contrasting message to the unchanging stillness and silence of the sentinal stones, reminding us that life is continually moving forward.

Having appreciated that though.....

I just had to peel it back to see what it would reveal underneath

A beautiful but sadly broken lily bud, before it had the time to blossom.

Britain's Brainiest Cemetery

The BBC named it 'Britain's Brainiest Cemetery' and in a recently written article said: A galaxy of talent lies buried here, in a little city of the distinguished dead. The story of academic life, of the birth of whole new disciplines since Victorian times, can be told through those who have their resting place here.

'It might have more IQ interred in one acre than any other in the world', writes Cambridge University history teacher Dr Mark Goldie.

The location is the Ascension Burial Ground in All Souls Lane, Cambridge.

This peaceful, yet wildly over grown cemetery is one of Cambridge's best kept secrets,  scarcely known to even the local people of the area.

At the last count, there are three Nobel prizewinners here, seven members of the Order of Merit, and over sixty who have entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: engineers, biologists, classicists, historians, poets, philosophers.

Collectively, these great minds, trace the revolution of thinking that began in Victorian times and produced the modern University.

This happened in three ways: Science, Secularisation, and Women.

Laboratory science took off, with larger labs appearing: Sir Horace Darwin ~ son of Charles Darwin ~ was crucial here, as an expert scientific instrument maker.

Another Son and Grandaughter of Charles Darwin are also interred here, as is

Charlotte Scott, pioneer woman student, who shocked the university in 1880 by performing outstandingly in the mathematics exams. Sadly it took decades before she could collect her rightful degree. She spent the later part of her career in the United States and was influential in the development of American mathematics, including the mathematical education of women.

 

Sir John Cockcroft, who split the atom in 1932, in the heyday of the great Cavendish Physics Lab, which produced a dozen Nobels. Later he became first Master of Churchill College - named for the great wartime leader who knew how to use science in war.

  

There's a sprinkling of astronomers here also, due to the nearby University Observatory including the astronomer who predicted the existence of the planet Neptune.



Also, Mr A.C. Benson, the author of the Patriotic lyrics ~ Land of Hope and Glory ~ for Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance Marches No.1.

Another grave in the burial site is that of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who was the first to identify the existence of vitamins, back in 1912.

Sir Arthur Eddington who was the astrophysicist who made the crucial observations of a solar eclipse that confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Sir James Frazer, who practically invented modern anthropology, even though he rarely left his college desk. His 'fieldwork' consisted of the study of the world's literature on ritual, folk religion, and superstition.

He smashed the traditional Christian belief by showing parallels between Christian and pagan myths. Frazer's book 'The Golden Bough' has never been out of print.

One of the most most sought-out graves is that of Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889 ~ 1951, perhaps the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.

Although this graveyard belongs to the Church of England - the parish of the Ascension -the usual financial difficulties, means that the church struggles to find the wherewithal to look after this historic place.

Cambridge ceased to be an Anglican enclave, and began admitting people of all religions and none - there are plenty of non-believers in this parish cemetery.

A Friends of the Ascension Burial Ground is being launched to save this little necropolis, because it is not officially part of Cambridge University, even though it lies in the centre of the University's development zone.

Once a year the Open Cambridge Scheme throws open it's doors to visitors dozens of labs, colleges, historic buildings, and gardens, including these burial grounds.

The former chapel is now the studio of American-born letter cutter Eric Marland.