University of Edinburgh

In spite of dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the University of Edinburgh is only the fourth-oldest university in Scotland (after St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen), hence the sixth-oldest in the English-speaking world (with Oxford and Cambridge, of course, in first and second positions).

As the city of Edinburgh itself grew in importance, however, its university also came to dominate its Scottish rivals. That is why, for such a relatively “young” university, Edinburgh is associated with a quite remarkable list of intellectual luminaries, including the following, including, during the seventeenth century, the well-known Presbyterian theologian, Samuel Rutherford.

During the following eighteenth-century – the Scottish Enlightenment – Edinburgh was home to a veritable galaxy of celebrated thinkers, including:

• Philosophers, David Hume, Adam Smith, & Adam Ferguson
• Theologian and mathematician, Thomas Bayes
• Theologian, educator, and signer of the US Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon
• Physician and US Declaration of Independence—signer, Benjamin Rush
• Lawyer, US Declaration of Independence – signer, and US Supreme Court Justice, James Wilson
• Physicist, Joseph Black
• Geologist, James Hutton
• Celebrated author of the Life of Johnson, James Boswell

During the Victoria era, two of the most-influential scientists of all time, the naturalist Charles Darwin and the physicist James Clerk Maxwell, both studied here. Other nineteenth-century, Edinburgh-connected scientists include the botanist Robert Brown (the first person to observe what is now called “Brownian motion”); the physician Joseph Lister (a pioneer of antiseptic surgery); and Alexander Graham Bell (the inventor of the telephone).

We may also mention:

• Philosopher, James Frederick Ferrier
• Novelists Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, & Arthur Conan Doyle
• Playwright, J.M. Barrie
• Neoclassical architect, William Henry Playfair
• Satirist and cultural critic, Thomas Carlyle

As for the twentieth century, among 19 Nobel Prize – winners who have been associated with the University of Edinburgh, we may mention:

• Max Born and Peter Higg–physics
• Peter Mitchell–chemistry
• Hermann Muller, Alexander Fleming, and May-Britt Moser–physiology or medicine

There have been four Edinburgh-connected Turing Award – winners, namely:

• Robin Milner
• Alan Kay
• Leslie Valiant
• Geoffrey Hinton

Scientific breakthroughs that have occurred here include the first cloning of a mammal (the sheep Dolly) and the first genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine. Edinburgh scientists also helped design the world’s first industrial-assembly robotic system.