Richard Appleton (academic)

Richard Appleton MA (17 February 1849 – 1 March 1909) was a British Anglican clergyman. He was Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Clergyman and fourth Master of Selwyn College, 1907 – 1909, Appleton was something of a throwback to the pattern of Cambridge academic life prior to the ‘revolution of the dons’ that occurred in the 1860s. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College when he graduated. He did not do research. He taught mathematics, theology, and Hebrew, in the days before teaching was expected to be specialised. After some years he went to be minister of a parish where the living was in the gift of Trinity College. He was, however, from a background that was increasingly rare in producing Cambridge undergraduates in Victorian times; his father was not well off, a clergyman with a large family, and scholarships got him through Christ’s Hospital school and Trinity College. Appleton had no previous connection with Selwyn College when he was chosen as its Master. The college had been founded around 1880 to counter some of the effects of the ‘revolution of the dons’. The university was thrown open to people of any religion and none, so the college was to be a haven for Anglicans. Until 1983 every Master was a clergyman. Appleton’s chief contribution to Selwyn was getting the Jacobean-style Hall built. His initials are carved on the front of the Hall stairway, adorned with an apple and a tun. He died of influenza.
He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.