Ruth and Robert Edwards bequest

The College received a generous £200,000 bequest from Ruth Edwards, the wife of Sir Robert (Bob) Edwards, past Fellow, Nobel Laureate and pioneer in IVF medicine, to help fund a studentship in the bio-medical field, in memory of her husband who died in 2013.

Ruth met Bob whilst at Edinburgh University around 1953 where they were both doing PhDs in Genetics. Ruth was very bright and greatly enjoyed her time at University and this was evident in the stories she used to tell to her daughters. Their family recall that one of the scientists Bob most admired was Ernest Rutherford and for the first three months of their relationship he didn’t know that Ruth was in fact, Ernest Rutherford’s grand-daughter! They became engaged during the course of their collaboration in Edinburgh and married in 1954 before departing for a year in California where they worked closely together to publish several joint papers before the birth of their first daughter.

They went on to have five daughters in under five years which was a full-time job for Ruth in the early years. By this time Bob was working at Cambridge University and becoming very involved in the field of human reproduction. Once the girls were at secondary school Ruth re-joined Bob at the University and she went on to produce further research papers in her own right. In 1978 they moved to a farm in Dry Drayton which led to a whole new range of projects for Ruth including the establishment of an award winning herd of angora goats with the help of IVF! From these she produced luxury wool for sale and created jumpers, sweaters and scarves that she sold at the farm shop. Living on a farm also facilitated Bob’s lifelong passion for trees. His daughters recall that he planted thousands of trees on the farm in his spare time, often returning from dinner at Churchill College on a summer evening to water and plant new trees until dusk descended!

Throughout his life, Bob was conscious of the importance of education for young people and was hugely motivated by the challenge of engaging bright minds to ‘think outside the box’ during his years of supervising graduate students at Cambridge in the late1960’s and 70’s. He was a demanding supervisor and expected much from his students but many of them have never forgotten what they owe to him. Ruth and her children were aware of Bob’s wish to give something back to future generations of students by leaving a legacy for the College and her bequest has brought this to fruition.

Michael Schoof has recently become the first beneficiary of the Professor Sir Robert Edwards studentship and is undertaking a research based MSc as part of Professor Julie Ahringer’s research group in the Gurdon Institute. Michael’s project will investigate the function of the Retinoblastoma/DREAM complex, in which dysregulation is linked to human cancers, including those of the reproductive system.

“He was always someone who pushed boundaries throughout his life in the field of human reproduction and IVF and we believe that the reason for his desire to leave some money to the College was to help future generations of bright students to study in this or a related field and give them the opportunity of coming to Churchill College. He was also conscious of the fact that many students struggle financially at university and always remembered experiencing this himself at Edinburgh University.’

—Caroline Roberts & Jenny Joy (two of Bob and Ruth’s daughters)

Marie Finston legacy

In 1971, Professor Morton Finston, Professor of Aeronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) arrived at Churchill College with his wife Marie and their two young children Lisa and Nina, then aged 11 and 9.

Morton had been invited to join the College for a term as a Visiting Fellow by the then Master Sir William Hawthorne, and was able to extend his stay in England via a personal sabbatical to enable his two children to complete a full school year.

Memories of the happy times they spent together as a family in the Sheppard Flats during that year prompted Marie to make a legacy gift of £3,375 in support of the College’s Visiting Fellowship fund and the bequest has been warmly received by the College.

Morton met his wife Marie at MIT when she was working at the Instrumentation Lab and she went on to work for Dr Charles Stark Draper, founder of Draper Laboratories following her graduation from Wellesley College. They loved good music – Marie was a classically trained pianist and Morton played the clarinet — and they both enjoyed travelling so they were excited to take up the opportunity of joining the Churchill College community for a year.

The family moved into the Sheppard Flats and quickly settled in to College life. Nina and Lisa vividly recall spending many happy hours on the College fields and in the Chapel and open tennis courts that were there in the 70’s, as well as frequenting the large strawberry patch nearby! They were also able to take advantage of living at the heart of a vibrant international community and made friends with children from Ghana, Nigeria, Spain, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, and Poland, many of whom they are still in touch with today.

Morton, for his part, welcomed the opportunity to work and socialise with world renowned scientists and scholars as part of the Churchill community and greatly enjoyed his time at the College, as did Marie who mastered driving ‘on the wrong side’ and took the opportunity to explore Cambridge and the surrounding countryside whenever possible. The family went on frequent excursions and Lisa and Nina recall visits to; the American Cemetery, Ely Cathedral, King’s College, the Backs, Newmarket and a favourite tea shop in Ashley as well as holiday trips to Great Yarmouth and the Cotswolds.

Just over 45 years on and Nina is now a lawyer working as Assistant Director for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington DC and Lisa, who pursued a career in healthcare, is presently a Corporate Director at Partners HealthCare based in Boston Mass. They both recall their time at Churchill very fondly and Nina is a confirmed Anglophile, having made several walking trips to England in subsequent years, often taking her mother with her to visit Cambridge and the College.

Nina and her mother, outside the Sheppard flats