I arrived in Cambridge in the fall of 1951 sensing a majesty of place and intellectual style unmatched anywhere in the world. The city's great university, reflecting almost 900 years of English history, is centered on the banks of the River Cam, whose modest waters move northeast across East Anglia to the market city of Ely. Ely's massive 12th-century cathedral had long towered over the vast flat fenland marshes that emptied into the still 40 miles of river from Cambridge to the shallow waters of the Wash, the estuary over which tides from the North Sea still roar twice daily. It was the draining over many centuries of the fens that created the rich agricultural fields and wealth of the great East Anglia estate owners. Their benefactions in return helped create along the "backs" of the Cam the many elegant student residences, dining halls, and chapels that already many centuries ago marked out Cambridge as a market city of extraordinary grace and beauty.

For most of its history, Cambridge University was highly decentralized, with teaching carried out exclusively by the residential colleges, among which Trinity was long the grandest, having enjoyed the matchless patronage of Henry VIII. In a room off the great court had lived the young Newton, whose greatest science was done in his 20s and 30s before he went up to London to be master of the mint.