Join us to celebrate our 150th anniversary!

We are excited to announce plans to commemorate our 150th anniversary this year. Under the theme "Celebrating our heritage, showcasing our present, and shaping the future," we have a fantastic line-up of events designed to bring our community together — honouring our rich past, showcasing our current innovations, and looking ahead to an exciting future in physics.

Three major events will be held leading up to June 2025:

Friday 24 January 2025: Cavendish Alumni Reunion

We are delighted to welcome you back to ‘Cavendish 2’. This special reunion will offer a chance to reconnect with fellow alumni and reflect on the legacy of Cavendish research that you helped shape. It will also be a poignant opportunity to say ‘goodbye’ to the old buildings that have housed generations of physicists over the past 50 years.

Look out for your e-invitation coming very soon.

May 2025: Public Opening of the Ray Dolby Centre

An official ceremony will be held to mark the opening of the Ray Dolby Centre, our state-of-the- art research facility. This event will acknowledge the generosity of the Dolby family and highlight the crucial role that philanthropy plays in advancing scientific research on a large scale.

June 2025: Two-day Cavendish Science Festival

To wrap up our celebrations, we’re hosting an unmissable two-day festival packed with student talks, science discussions, live experiments, and even art performances. This festival will be a vibrant celebration of our shared achievements and a look ahead at the groundbreaking research that will define our future.

Beyond these events, we have a variety of other activities planned and plenty more ways for you to engage, including:

From November 2024 to May 2025, a special Cavendish Exhibition at Cambridge’s Whipple Museum of the History of Science will showcase and celebrate the history and discoveries of the Department.
In March 2025, the prestigious Scott Lectures will relaunch with a series of lectures open to all by Mikhail Lukin, head of the Quantum Optics Laboratory at Harvard University (from 3rd to 7th March)
In March 2025, we’ll launch a new demonstration- packed historical talk and a Cambridge Physics Audio Tour for the Cambridge Festival.
Plus, we’re sharing your stories as part of the #150CavendishStories campaign on social media, celebrating the diverse contributions of our alumni community.

This is a unique moment in our department’s history, and we’d love for you to be part of it. Whether you can attend one event or all, we hope you’ll join us in celebrating the incredible legacy and bright future of the Cavendish Laboratory.

Stay tuned for more details and updates throughout this year-long celebration, on our website and via email.

Remember to update your details at alumni.cam.ac.uk/update-your-details to not miss a thing!