The college is named after T. S. Eliot, the poet who died on 4 January 1965, the same day the university was formally established.
[3] The need to have three hundred study-bedrooms and several large areas for distinctive use, such as teaching, a common room and a dining hall plus kitchens, led to the adoption of a section design with the college divided into several square blocks, each containing a distinctive interior space with study bedrooms along all four walls.
[3] The college is to a large extent a mirror of Rutherford College, as the same basic design was used for both and time constraints meant that there was no opportunity for the latter to be adapted to meet problems encountered in the use of the former.
However due to the contours of the hill on which the campus is built, the two colleges are not exactly alike and in later years annexe extensions and alterations were to further the differences.
("Becket" was one of several names originally considered for what became Darwin College.