The University of Aberdeen (abbreviated Aberd. in post-nominals; Scottish Gaelic: Oilthigh Obar Dheathain) is a public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was founded in 1495 when William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen and Chancellor of Scotland, petitioned Pope Alexander VI on behalf of King James IV to establish King's College, making it one of Scotland's four ancient universities and the fifth-oldest university in the English-speaking world. Along with the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, the university was part of the Scottish Enlightenment during the 18th century.
The university as it is currently constituted was formed in 1860 by a merger between King's College and Marischal College, a second university founded in 1593 as a Protestant alternative to the former. The university's iconic buildings act as symbols of wider Aberdeen, particularly Marischal College in the city centre and the crown steeple of King's College in Old Aberdeen. There are two campuses; the predominantly utilised King's College campus dominates the section of the city known as Old Aberdeen, which is approximately two miles north of the city centre. Although the original site of the university's foundation, most academic buildings apart from the King's College Chapel and Quadrangle were constructed in the 20th century during a period of significant expansion. The university's Foresterhill campus is next to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and houses the School of Medicine and Dentistry as well as the School of Medical Sciences. Together these buildings form one of Europe's largest health campuses. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £257.2 million of which £54.2 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £262.5 million.
Aberdeen has educated a wide range of notable alumni, and the university played key roles in the Scottish Reformation, Scottish Enlightenment, and the Scottish Renaissance. Five Nobel laureates have since been associated with the university: two in Chemistry, one in Physiology or Medicine, one in Physics, and one in Peace.
History
King's and Marischal Colleges
There appears to have existed in Old Aberdeen, from a very early period, a studium generate, or university, attached to the episcopal chapter of the See of Aberdeen. It is said to have been founded in 1157 by Edward, Bishop of Aberdeen, and although, according to Hector Boece, it still existed at the period when King's College was founded, it is probable that it had in some way ceased to answer the purposes which it must have been designed to serve, since King James IV, in his letter to Pope Alexander VI, requesting him to found a university in Old Aberdeen, mentions as the chief motive for the undertaking, the profound ignorance of the inhabitants of the north of Scotland, and the great deficiency of properly educated men to fill the clerical office in that part of his kingdom.
The first university in Aberdeen, King's College, formally The university and King's College of Aberdeen (Collegium Regium Aberdonense), was founded on 10 February 1494 by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, Chancellor of Scotland, and a graduate of the University of Glasgow drafting a request on behalf of King James IV to Pope Alexander VI resulting in a papal bull being issued. It seems that James was keen to ensure that Scotland had as many universities as England at the time, and it was to possess all the privileges enjoyed by those of Paris and Bologna, two of the most highly favoured in Europe. The university, modelled on that of the University of Paris and intended principally as a law school, soon became the most famous and popular of the Scots seats of learning, largely due to the prestige of Elphinstone and his friend, Hector Boece, the first principal appointed in 1500. Its aim was to train doctors, teachers and clergy who would serve the communities of northern Scotland, as well as lawyers and administrators for the Scottish Crown. It was a collegiate foundation with 36 full-time staff and students and walls protecting it from the outside world. In 1497 the college established the first chair of medicine in the English-speaking world.
The first book (there was no printing press in Scotland at the time) to be printed in Edinburgh and in Scotland was the Aberdeen Breviary, which was written by both Elphinstone and Boece in 1509.
Following the Scottish Reformation in 1560, King's College was purged of its Roman Catholic staff but in other respects was largely resistant to change. George Keith, the fifth Earl Marischal, was a moderniser within the college and supportive of the reforming ideas of Peter Ramus and Andrew Melville. In April 1593 he founded a second university in the 'New Town', Marischal College. It is also possible the founding of the Fraserburgh University in nearby Fraserburgh by Sir Alexander Fraser, a business rival of Keith, was instrumental in its creation. Aberdeen was highly unusual at this time for having two universities in one city: as 20th-century university prospectuses observed, Aberdeen had the same number as existed in England at the time (the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge).
Initially, Marischal College offered the principal of King's College a role in selecting its academics, but this was refused – the first blow in a developing rivalry. Marischal College, in the commercial heart of the city (rather than the ancient but much smaller collegiate enclave of Old Aberdeen), was quite different in nature and outlook. For example, it was more integrated into the life of the city, such as allowing students to live outwith the college. The two rival colleges often clashed, sometimes in court, but also in brawls between students on the streets of Aberdeen. Duncan Liddell endowed the first chair in mathematics at Marischal College in 1613, but the first professor was not appointed until 1626.
As the institutions put aside their differences, a process of attempted (but unsuccessful) mergers began in the 17th century. During this time, both colleges made notable intellectual contributions to the Scottish Enlightenment. Both colleges supported the Jacobite rebellion and following the defeat of the 1715 rising were largely purged by the authorities of their academics and officials.
King Charles' University (1641–61) and the merger of the two colleges (1860)
The nearest the two colleges had come to full union was as the Caroline University of Aberdeen, a merger initiated by Charles I in 1641, which united the two colleges for twenty years. Following the civil conflicts of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a more complete unification was attempted following the ratification of Parliament by Oliver Cromwell during the interregnum in 1654. This united university survived until the Restoration whereby all laws made during this period were rescinded by Charles II and the two colleges reverted to independent status. Charles I is still recognised as one of the university's founders, due to his part in creating the Caroline University and his benevolence towards King's College.
The Aberdeen Philosophical Society (known locally as the Wise Club) was created by Thomas Reid, George Campbell, David Skene, John Gregory, John Stewart, and Robert Traill, and held its first meeting in the Old Red Lion Inn on 12 January 1758. From its inception, the society was an intimate, private body whose members were drawn exclusively from the learned professions, and this feature differentiated it from the more open and socially inclusive societies like the Glasgow Literary Society or the Select Society of Edinburgh. Over 133 papers were given and discussed at the meeting, and many of these formed the basis of books subsequently published. The society was eventually disbanded in March 1773. The society and its individual members played a key role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and it was the most important forum for the promotion of enlightened thought and values in Aberdeen. The Philosophical Society was revived in 1840, with the object of receiving and debating original scientific, literary and philosophical papers from its members; however, the decision was taken on 13 September 1939 to discontinue its meetings, chiefly in view of the difficulties posed by the war, although it does not appear to have been ever formally wound up.
The Free Church of Scotland founded Christ's College in Aberdeen in 1843 for the training of ministers. An extravagant Gothic building, with a commanding oriel window and tower, was erected for the college at the western end of Union Street in 1850. Linked to the college was a museum and library (containing 17,000 volumes). Following the church reunion of 1929, Christ's College became a Church of Scotland college and was integrated into the University of Aberdeen. The college building is no longer used by either the church or the university, and the college is contained completely within the buildings of King's College, maintaining its own divinity library. The university hosted its first meeting of the British Science Association in 1859. Having no suitable meeting place to host the meeting, the town raised the money themselves by personal subscription and built the Music Hall. It was capable of holding about 2,500 people and so successful was the meeting that associate membership, necessary to gain access to the proceedings, had to be capped. Prominent among the local organisers were Professors James Clerk Maxwell (Natural Philosophy) and James Nicol (Geology) of Marischal College. Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, took on the role of president for the year. The young Maxwell himself, still only 28, spoke on three different subjects, one being a presentation of his newly discovered law of molecular velocities in a gas. The 'Maxwell distribution law', as it is now known, is the law of physics with the strongest Aberdeen connection. In addition, Sir Charles Lyell, president of the Geological Section of the British Academy, and a champion of Charles Darwin's work, made one of the first announcements that Darwin had undertaken a body of work on evolution and was about to release his findings. The organisers felt that they might be risking something in holding the meeting much further north than they had done before but in the event the Aberdeen meeting was the most well attended the BA had ever had.
Further unsuccessful suggestions for union were brought about throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. William Ogilvie, known as the Rebel Professor, proposed a paper on the union and reform of the two colleges in 1787, but the proposals were rejected by seven (known as the 'seven wise Masters') out of ten professors at King's. The evolving examination system and university research now required much higher academic standards from the students. The two colleges in Aberdeen merged on 15 September 1860 in accordance with the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858, which also created a new medical school at Marischal College. The 1858 Act of Parliament stated the "united University shall take rank among the Universities of Scotland as from the date of erection of King's College and University." The university is thus Scotland's third oldest and the United Kingdom's fifth oldest university.
The transference of the arts classes from Marischal to King's College required the extension of King's at the cost of £20,000. This included the rebuilding of two sides of the quadrangle for the class-rooms (1862) and the erection of the library (1870), which for many years had occupied the nave of the chapel.
In 1873, university students voted against university degrees being open to women. However, all faculties were open to women in 1892, and in 1894 the first 20 matriculated females began their studies at the university. Four women graduated in arts by 1898, and by the following year, women made up a quarter of the faculty.
The modern university
The closing of the quadrangle of Marischal College was completed during the university's quatercentenary in 1906, which was officially opened by Edward VII and Alexandra, and which saw some of the most extravagant celebrations and expressions of civic pride ever demonstrated in Aberdeen. Four days of festivities took place across the city, which included church services, banquets, torchlight processions, and fireworks displays. In all, the cost of the four days of festivities was the modern equivalent of £1.34 million. The ceremony saw the granting of honorary degrees to over a hundred public and academic figures from across the academic world. In an extravagant display of luxury, Lord Strathcona, the then chancellor of the university, spent £8518 in entertaining around 2500 invited guests in a tent specially designed for the occasion. After having received an honorary degree (LLD) in 1905, Thomas Hardy celebrated Aberdeen as 'a university which can claim in my opinion to an exceptional degree that breadth of view & openness of mind that all Universities profess to cultivate, but many stifle'. Hardy wrote a poem for a special number of the student publication, Alma Mater, in celebration of the quatercentenary of the university.
'I looked and thought, "All is too gray and cold
To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!"
Till a voice passed: "Behind that granite mien
Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen."
I looked anew; and saw the radiant form
Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm,
On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime
Men count for the stability of the time'
In the 20th century, the university expanded greatly, particularly at King's College. New buildings were constructed on the land around King's College throughout the 20th century. Initially, these were built to match the ancient buildings (e.g. the New King's lecture rooms and Elphinstone Hall), but later ones from the 1960s onward were constructed in brutalist style. Meanwhile, the Foresterhill campus began to train medical students in the 1930s next to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.