Person
Matriculated at Clare, 1960.
Person
·
16 April 1873 - 15 December 1940
Alfred Young was born on 16 April, 1873 in Widnes, Lancashire; his family moved to Bournemouth in 1879 and after being educated at home when to Monkton Combe School near Bath. He won a scholarship to Clare College and was admitted in 1892; excellent oarsman; began to undertake research in his third year which prevented him from achieving a very high position in the Tripos and so he was placed tenth Wrangler in 1895; he published his first paper in 1899, "The irreducible concomitants of any number of binary quartics" and in 1900 he introduced "young tableaus" the method for which he is best remembered; appointed as lecturer at Selwyn College in 1901 and Fellow at Clare in 1905 where he also became Bursar; married Edith Clara in 1907; ordained in 1908 and became a Curate at Christ Church, Hastings; also awarded a Sc. D from Cambridge; then parish priest at Birdbrook, Essex where he lived for the rest of his life, combining successfully the work of a parish priest with his researches in the theory of the algebra of groups. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1934; he died on 15 December 1940. See obituary in Clare Association Annual 1947, pp. 99-101
'Tripos' verses were Latin (or occasionally Greek) verses composed for distribution, usually as printed sheets, at academic ceremonies in Cambridge from 1565 (at the latest) until 1894. Most of the earliest have as their subjects serious academic questions which were formally debated as part of the ceremonies; many others are humorous or satirical; some are simply on whatever topic happened to take the author's fancy.
The verses were part of the University's ceremony of graduation. Printed on the back of the verses are the names of the successful candidates for a baccalaureate degree.
See also College Development
Johnson Exhibitions (Witham and Manthorpe, later Whaplode and Holbeach), 1629
Diggons Foundation (Braintree, Liss and Stepney), 1657
Metcalfe Scholarship (Owstwick), [1680-1722] 1724
Greene Scholarships and Cups (Tamworth), [1730] 1747 (Cups still awarded)
Coles Foundation (investments), 1868 and 1882
Mellon Scholarships, 1932 (refounded as Fellowships financed by Old Dominion Foundation, 1948). Further gifts from Paul Mellon and Old Dominion Foundation, 1952, 1954 and nd [c. 1962]