As we head into the final month of the year, many in the UK will be turning their minds to gift giving. Each of us has a different idea of what makes a good gift – some might hope for a flashy new gadget from the electronics section at John Lewis, others are happy with something as simple as a bar of Toblerone. But, unless you are the University of Cambridge’s physics department, you probably don’t expect your gifts to come in the shape of an £85m cheque.

To be fair, the donation made by the Ray Dolby (of surround-sound fame) estate in 2017, was large even for the famous university. In fact, it was the biggest philanthropic donation ever made to UK science. Dolby’s gift was to be spent on building a new home for the Cavendish Laboratory, where he received his PhD in 1961.

If you find it hard to imagine giving so generously to your own place of education, you might want to bear in mind the lab’s history. Few research organisations can claim a connection to so many Nobel Prize winners that they lose count. The current tally is 31, after staff found a winner down the back of the sofa. 

“Someone had got the Nobel Prize back in the 1950s and we figured out he was a Cavendish alumni,” a university staff member tells me. Today, the Cavendish is home to cutting edge research at the forefront of experimental and theoretical physics.