Cantabrigian-Edinburgensian People

I recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with my PhD in artificial intelligence. Though I’ve been working for almost a year now, the graduation was still a significant marker as the end of my formal education, which spanned 23 years (with some short gaps for internships) from my first day in primary school to my PhD graduation. I am extremely grateful to my parents — present at both the start and end of this journey — whose love and support every moment between (and of course, thereafter) has been indispensable. I am also grateful to the many friend and mentors I met along the way.

My undergraduate degree was an MEng from the University of Cambridge. Aware of at least two notable people who were educated at both the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh — one of the ‘godfathers’ of AI, Geoffrey Hinton; and one of my favourite historical figures (and grandfather of Charles Darwin), the polymath Erasmus Darwin — I decided to check who else fell into this category (other than some people I know personally). To do so, I once again consulted Wikidata.

To produce this table I used the following Wikidata query:

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?itemDescription ?articles ?en_wiki_article WHERE {
    ?item wikibase:sitelinks ?articles. # counts no. of articles (significance proxy)
    ?item schema:description ?description.
    ?item p:P31 ?is_person.
    ?item p:P69 ?is_edin.
    ?item p:P69 ?is_cantab.
    ?is_person ps:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q5.
    ?is_edin ps:P69/wdt:P361* wd:Q160302.
    ?is_cantab ps:P69/wdt:P361* wd:Q35794.
    OPTIONAL{ # get english wiki link (if extant)
      ?en_wiki_article schema:about ?item.
      ?en_wiki_article schema:isPartOf <https://en.wikipedia.org/>.
    }
    SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
}

The data comes with caveats, including the standard warning that the Wikidata database is not complete, so it is likely that people are missing from the list. The table includes anyone listed as having been educated at both the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, even if they did not finish one of the degrees (e.g. Charles Darwin). I also do not filter by the type of degree awarded by each institution, because for example the PhD degree was not even awarded by British universities until 1917.

The list also includes people like Edward Appleton, who as far as I can tell was not actually educated at the University of Edinburgh, but was instead the Vice-Chancellor. I’ve kept him on the list anyway, even though I want to mostly focus on people who were formally educated at both institutions.

I use the number of different language wikipedia articles as a proxy for notability. I’ve limited the table above to people with at least one English-language wikipedia page.

High School

I could’ve gone further and included alumni of my high school. However, it seems that nobody with a Wikidata entry attended all three institutions. The one overlap I could find is J. A. Ratcliffe, a physicist who attended the University of Cambridge. Interestingly, Ratcliffe was a student of Edward Appleton, who (debatably) appears on the main list.

I didn’t even try for my primary school, since the primary school people attend is usually not noted on Wikidata (or elsewhere).