Gonville held various positions in the English Church, serving as Rector of three parishes, Thelnetham (1320–26), Rushford, Norfolk (1326–1342), and Terrington St Clement (1343–1351).

Such occupations afforded him sufficient wealth that he was able to lend money to Edward III, an act that saw him appointed a King's Clerk.

[8] With the support of Sir Walter Manny, Gonville petitioned the king for permission to found a college at Cambridge consisting of 20 scholars.

William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, intervened and moved the college to its current location off Trinity Street in central Cambridge.

[9] Caius had read divinity at the college between 1529 and 1533 and later travelled to Renaissance Italy, where he studied medicine at the University of Padua under Montanus and Vesalius.

At the time of the college's re-founding, he had worked as physician to two English monarchs, Edward VI and Mary I, and later served in the same capacity for Elizabeth I.

Caius accepted no payment for his services but insisted on several rules, including that the college admit no scholar who "is deformed, dumb, blind, lame, maimed, mutilated, a Welshman, or suffering from any grave or contagious illness, or an invalid, that is sick in a serious measure".

Caius was responsible for developing the college's strong global reputation in medicine, which continues to this day.

The buildings expert James D. Wenn has identified number of meanings in the gate of honour associated with the practice of medicine in classical antiquity, Plato and the geometry of the rhombic dodecahedron.

On the wall of the Hall hangs a college flag, which in 1912 was flown at the South Pole by Cambridge's Edward Wilson during the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–1913.

Adjacent to Harvey Court is the Stephen Hawking Building, which opened its doors to first-year undergraduates in October 2006.

Additional buildings provide housing for older students, a day care, and various study and music rooms.

It is preceded by the benediction, which is said in Latin: Benedic, Domine, nobis et donis tuis quae ex largitate tua sumus sumpturi; et concede ut, ab iis salubriter enutriti, tibi debitum obsequium praestare valeamus, per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum; mensae caelestis nos participes facias, Rex aeternae gloriae.

[24] In recent years Steve Fishwick, Sam Mayne, Ian Shaw, Barry Green, Gareth Lockrane, and Paul Jarvis have all been featured.

It is one of the UK's leading collegiate choirs, with an international reputation for performances of exceptional quality but also for innovative and adventurous recordings.

The College's musical tradition began at the end of the nineteenth century with a choir of men and boys, founded by the celebrated composer of Anglican church music Charles Wood, and later became an exclusively undergraduate male choir under Wood's successor the composer Patrick Hadley.

[25] Since its founding, Gonville and Caius has graduated accomplished and famed individuals across most fields, including 15 Nobel Prize laureates: