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'In 1889 he married Janetta Colquhoun Smith, a lively and witty woman, daughter of George Smith, journalist and author, and sister of George Adam Smith, Old Testament scholar. They had one daughter and three sons (two of whom were twins). Their eldest son died in infancy.' Dictionary of National Biography entry for William Ritchie Sorley

Francis Macdonald Cornford was born at Eastbourne on 27 February 1874, son of The Revd James Cornford and Mary Emma Macdonald. He attended St Paul's School and was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge on 13 June 1893 and was elected a Scholar the following year. Cornford obtained firsts in both parts of the classical tripos in 1895 and 1897; he was awarded the Chancellor's Classical Medal in the latter year. In 1897 he applied for the Chair of Greek at Cardiff, but was unsuccessful. However, in 1899 he was elected a Fellow of Trinity. He was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Classics at the College in 1902 and Lecturer in 1904. In 1909 Cornford Married Frances Darwin, daughter of Ellen Crofts of Newnham College and the botanist Francis Darwin. Frances was to become a poet of note and as such an influence on their eldest son Rupert John (known simply as John), born in 1915. Three further children followed, Christopher Francis, born 1917, a son in 1921 and a daughter two years later. During WWI Cornford was a musketry instructor at Grantham and rose to the rank of Captain before transferring to the Ministry of Munitions.

In 1921 and 1928 Cornford was unsuccessfully a candidate for the Regius Chair of Greek. In 1927 he was appointed Brereton Reader in Classics and four years later became the first to hold the Laurence Chair in Ancient Philosophy, a post which he held until retirement in 1939. He was elected FBA in 1937.

Early in his academic career, Cornford became disenchanted with "Cambridge classics" with its emphasis on philology and published "The Cambridge Classical Course: an essay in anticipation of further reform". in 1903. He soon allied with like-minded persons such as Jane Ellen Harrison, Gilbert Murray and A B Cook in a group that became known as the 'Cambridge Ritualists' who looked for the underlying thoughts and myths that underpinned classical Greece. A string of publications ensued: Thucydides Mythistoricus (1907), From Religion to Philosophy: a study in the origins of Western speculation" (1912), "The Origins of Attic Comedy" (1914), "Greek Religious thought from Homer to Alexander" (1923), The Laws of Motion in Ancient Thought (1931), Before and After Socrates (1931), Plato's Theory of Knowledge: the Theaetetus and Sophist of Plato (1935), Plato's Cosmology: the Timaeus of Plato (1937), Plato and Parmenides (1939). A series of essays, Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays* was published posthumously.

Cornford was also active politically on the Cambridge scene. In 1897 he organised a student petition in favour of degrees for women and in 1904 published an anonymous flysheet on the subject of compulsory chapel. To support rationalist moves in the University he joined with C K Ogden in founding the Heretics. His most famous excursion into University politics was Microcosmographia Academica, first published anonymously in 1908 and reissued many times since. In it he satirises the Cambridge system and the types of administrator that it produced. During WWI, when Bertrand Russell was deprived of his College lectureship, Cornford was one of the body of Fellows that attempted to get him reinstated.

Cornford died at his home, Conduit Head, on 3 January 1943.

Piero Sraffa was born in Turin in 1898 the son of Angelo Sraffa, Professor of Commercial Law and Irma Tivoli. The young Sraffa was educated at the Liceo d'Azeglio and at the University of Turin where his honours thesis Monetary inflation in Italy during and after the War gained the approval of his tutor, Luigi Einaudi. From 1921-22 Sraffa studied at the LSE, but returned to Italy to hold posts at Perugia and Cagliari. He was appointed Professor of Political Economy at this latter institution in 1926 and held it for the rest of his life, donating his salary to the maintenance of the library. However, as a critic of the Fascists there was some personal danger if he remained there permanently and in 1927 he took up a lectureship in Cambridge which he was to hold only for three years, feeling himself unfit for the duties of lecturing. The intervention of Keynes caused the position of Marshall Librarian to be created especially for Sraffa allowing him to concentrate on research and his responsibilities for graduate students. He did, nonethless, return to lecturing for the years 1941-43 when he gave a course on industry.

Although Sraffa held dining rights at King's College, he was awarded no college fellowship until 1939 when he was elected as a fellow by Trinity, and that College remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1961 he was awarded the Södeström Gold Medal by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and two years later was made Reader in economics by Cambridge University. He died in 1983.

At his best face-to-face or in small group discussions, Sraffa's interests and intellectual contacts seem far-reaching. A close but not uncritical friendship with Antonio Gramsci began in 1919. After Gramsci's imprisonment in 1926 Sraffa visited him and tried, unsuccessfully, to gain his release. He was nevertheless instrumental in the production of the Quaderni dal Carcere by providing Gramsci with writing materials and, after his death in 1937 by recounting his wishes regarding their publication. During the 1930's, his weekly discussions with Wittgenstein were foremost in persuading the philosopher to turn from the ideas regarding language proposed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and to strike out on the course that led to the Philosophical Investigations. No less important in terms of influence is the fact that Sraffa was one of the organisers of the circus that discussed Keynes' Treatise on Money which was to lead to the views propounded in the General Theory....

Sraffa's own literary reputation rests on a number of important articles and two longer works, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo (pub 1951-73) and Production of Commodities by means of Commodities: prelude to a critique of economic theory (1960). The former work runs to ten volumes plus an index and was 43 years in completion, requiring the patient aid of Maurice Dobb and a number of research assistants. It is regarded as a scholarly masterpiece. Once volume ten of the Ricardo edition was completed. Sraffa turned again to his notes of the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s to produce Production of Commodities... which received mixed reviews.

Not entirely divorced from his academic interests was Sraffa's love of books, especially on the subject of economics and politics. He amassed an outstanding library of over 8000 volumes, also housed at Trinity College Library, a catalogue of which has been published by Giancarlo de Vivo. In addition to printed works Sraffa collected several hundred autographs which are catalogued elsewhere