Matriculated Clare, 1822. Clare Fellow, 1829 - 1836
William Charles Denis Browne (1888-1915), matriculated at Clare in 1907. He was admitted on a Classics scholarship but spent most of his time at College pursuing musical interests and rowing. Took a teaching position at Repton after Clare but was there less than a year and then took a job as organist at Guy's hopsital in London. He then taught music at Morley College at the same time as working at Guy's hospital and was also a music critic for the Times and New Statesman. He was killed in action at Gallipoli during the First World War.
William Butler matriculated as sizar from Peterhouse, Lent 1557/8, BA 1560/1, MA 1564, Fellow 1561. He was elected a fellow of Clare in 1572. Despite no formal qualification in medicine, he gained a significant reputation within the medical community; he is known to have acted as physician to James I. Widely considered an eccentric, his restorative techniques were uniquely imaginative. He is said to have once revived a man suffering from an opium overdose by putting him inside the chest cavity of a recently-slaughtered cow, and cured another patient of a fever by having him thrown off a balcony into the Thames. He died 29th January 1617/8 and is buried at Great St Marys, Cambridge.
Extract from Lempriere's Universal Biography , 1808: 'Butler, William, a physician, of Ipswich, educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, He practised at Cambridge without a degree, but the oddity of his manners, and the bold method with which he treated his patients often successfully rendered him a favourite in his profession. Some anecdotes of him are recorded, which exhibit him more as a capricious boy or a madman than a man of sound sense. He died 1618 aged 82. He left no writings behind him'.
Matriculated at Clare, 1949.
Matriculated at Clare, 1963, and graduated in 1967.
Geoffrey Elton (1921-1994) was born in T�bingen, Germany in 1921 as Gottfried Rudolf Ehrenberg. His parents were the scholars Victor Ehrenberg and Eva Dorothea Sommer. Elton's family fled to Britain in 1939 and Elton later graduated in Ancient History from the University of London. He enlisted in the British Army in 1943 and became a British citizen in 1947. He later taught at the University of Glasgow and from 1949 onwards at Clare College, Cambridge University and was the Regius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988. He was knighted in 1986. Elton worked as publication secretary of the British Academy from 1981 to 1990 and served as the president of the Royal Historical Society from 1972 to 1976. He married a fellow historian, Sheila Lambert, in 1952. He died in 1994. Lady Elton later died in 2006.
Matriculation at Clare, 1875.
(1592/3-1637). Matriculated at Clare, 1610, later a Fellow 1610-1631. He established a spiritual community with his extended family at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire in 1626.
(1949-2013). Fellow of Clare, 1982; Professor of French and neo-Latin literature, 2004; Faculty chair of Modern & Medieval Languages; British Academy Fellow, 2009.
Matriculated at Clare, 1919.