William Owen Chadwick OM KBE FRSE FBA (20 May 1916 – 17 July 2015) was a British Anglican priest, academic, rugby international,[1] writer and prominent historian of Christianity.

In his obituaries, Chadwick was described as "one of the great religious historians of our time" by The Independent,[2] and as "one of the most remarkable men of letters of the 20th century" by The Guardian.

He served as a curate at St John's Church in Huddersfield for two years and was then chaplain of Wellington College in Berkshire until the end of the Second World War.

A few years later, in 1968, he was elected to the position of Regius Professor of Modern History, an ancient chair, which he held until 1982, and was President of the British Academy during the early 1980s.

As vice-chancellor from 1969 to 1971, he guided Cambridge through turbulent times in the late 1960s, including the Garden House riot in 1970.

During his time as master, Selwyn became a full college of Cambridge University, in 1958 (though it had been founded back in 1882), and it ceased to require its students to be communicant members of the Church of England.

Under Chadwick's years as master, the numbers of fellows and postgraduates at Selwyn were doubled, greatly increasing the research output of the college.

Chadwick wrote about such issues as the formation of the papacy in the modern world; about Lord Acton; about the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century; about the Church of England in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and about the secularisation of Europe in thought and culture.

He participated in the debate[clarification needed] about the role of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust during World War II.

Owen Chadwick was also General Editor of the Penguin (formerly Pelican) History of the Church, to which he contributed the third volume (The Reformation), the seventh (The Christian Church in the Cold War, 1992) and the last two chapters of the sixth ("A History of Christian Missions", second edition 1986).

[3] After retiring, Chadwick lived with his wife in Newnham, in Cambridge, but also spent time in Cley next the Sea in Norfolk, where he was priest in charge.