The Cobbold family and their kin have provided England's elite universities with many talented scholars across a broad range of academic disciplines. Many have attended either Oxford or Cambridge, and strong and continuing associations between the family and particular colleges abound. Nowhere is this connection stronger than at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which has welcomed no fewer than twenty-one (and counting) Cobbolds through its gates over the past couple of centuries. The four men who feature in this chapter were experts in very different fields of study. What binds them together is a desire to push forward the boundaries of knowledge and, perhaps more significantly, a willingness to share their findings and to inform and instruct others for the benefit of academic or scientific progress.

Temple Chevallier, the nephew of the Reverend John Chevallier MD and of Harriet Chevallier who married John Wilkinson Cobbold, was a true academic all-rounder, the archetypal Victorian polymath for whom expertise in just one field of study was not enough. The breadth of Temple's talents was only matched by his industry, for not only did he teach, research and perform administrative duties within Durham University, he was also a devoted churchman in the nearby rural parish of Esh. Remarkably, he was able to pursue two demanding careers concurrently without detriment to either. In the study of mathematics and astronomy he had few equals and had he chosen to devote his entire life to just one subject he might have achieved even greater renown.