page_title: King Edward's School, Birmingham
section_title: Academia
hierarchical_section_title: King Edward's School, Birmingham / Notable former pupils / Academia
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Sir John Robert Vane. Vane was Director of Group Research and Development at the Wellcome Foundation 1973-1985.
context_page_description: King Edward's School is a selective independent day school for boys in Edgbaston, an area of Birmingham, England. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. As of 2019, King Edward's School was ranked as one of the top 10 International Baccalaureate schools in the United Kingdom.
  It is a boys' school, although it shares the site, and is twinned, with King Edward VI High School for Girls. Whilst the two schools are run completely separately, dramatic arts, societies, music and other events are often shared; the schools also share a couple of hockey pitches and several clubs. The shared area is called Winterbourne after the nearby Winterbourne Botanic Garden.
  Alumni of the school include two Nobel laureates, J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, and Field Marshal William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, British military commander in Burma during the Second World War.
context_section_description: Harry Boot, physicist, co-developer of the cavity magnetron
  Richard Ewen Borcherds, mathematician; winner of the 1998 Fields Medal for the proof of the Monstrous moonshine conjecture
  George Caird, New Testament scholar; Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exigesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford University
  Henry Cary, translator of Dante
  Percy John Daniell, mathematician
  Sir Francis Galton, Victorian polymath
  John Hall-Edwards, physician and pioneer in the medical use of X-rays
  John Hawthorne, philosopher, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University
  Alfred Hazel, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford
  Frank Horton FRS Professor of Physics at Royal Holloway College and Vice-Chancellor of the University of London 1939–1945
  Alfred Edward Housman, classicist and poet; author of A Shropshire Lad and holder of the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Cambridge University
  J. S. Mitchell, Radiotherapist and Regius Professor of Physic, University of Cambridge 1957–1975
  Alan Nunn May, physicist and traitor who supplied atom secrets to the Soviet Union
  Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, social anthropologist
  Julian Roberts, librarian and bibliographer
  Thomas A. Shippey, medievalist scholar on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Professor of English at the University of Leeds
  J. R. R. Tolkien, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature; author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
  Sir John Vane, 1982 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
  Maurice Wilkins, 1962 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
caption: Sir John Vane was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for his "discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related biologically active substances".
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