Several streets in the city, including Harvey Road, Glisson Road, and Gresham Road, are named after Gonville and Caius alumni. Other notable alumni include John Venn (inventor of the Venn diagram), former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Father of the House of Commons Kenneth Clarke, comedian and Channel 4 television presenter Jimmy Carr, and former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell. Stephen Hawking, previously Cambridge's Lucasian Chair of Mathematics Emeritus, was a fellow of the college from 1965 until his death in 2018.

Other alumni in the sciences include Francis Crick (joint discoverer of the structure of DNA with James Watson), James Chadwick (discoverer of the neutron), and Howard Florey (developer of penicillin). Since then graduates have included the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize, Dorothy Hodgkin the poet Sylvia Plath and the writer Iris Murdoch. Famous Gonville and Caius alumni include physicians John Caius (who gave the college the caduceus in its insignia) and William Harvey. It also has globally-recognized and prestigious academic programmes in law, economics, English literature, and history.

The college has long historical associations with the teaching of medicine, especially due to its prominent alumni in the medical profession.

University of cambridge notable alumni