The University of Aberdeen: Scotland’s Two-Universities City

Two Universities, One City, 267 Years

After the Reformation, King’s was purged — Principal Alexander Anderson was ejected in 1569 and Alexander Arbuthnot installed as the first Protestant principal — but the institution stayed conservative in temper. In April 1593 George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal, himself a King’s graduate who had studied in Calvinist Geneva, chartered a second university in New Aberdeen, on the site of a dissolved Greyfriars house. The charter was signed on 2 April 1593, ratified by the Scots Parliament on 21 July, and handed to the first principal, Robert Howie, in September 1594.

What is beyond dispute is that the two coexisted badly. Marischal initially offered King’s a hand in selecting its academics; King’s refused, which one historian calls the first blow in a developing rivalry. The competition ran through the courts and occasionally through the streets. Twentieth-century prospectuses enjoyed pointing out that Aberdeen alone had as many universities as the whole of England.

Charles I merged them in 1641 as the Caroline University of Aberdeen; Cromwell’s parliament confirmed the arrangement, and the Restoration annulled it, so the union dissolved in 1661. In 1787 William Ogilvie, the reforming professor known as the Rebel Professor, proposed union again and was defeated by seven of the ten King’s professors, the self-styled seven wise Masters. The city kept its two universities for another seventy-three years.

The 1860 Merger and the Professor It Cost

Section 1 of the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858 settled the matter: King’s College and Marischal College were to be united under the title University of Aberdeen. The union took effect on 15 September 1860. The drafting was diplomatic — the Act ranked the united University from King’s foundation of 1495, so that neither side could be described as having been swallowed. Arts and divinity were taught at King’s, law and medicine at Marischal, and a new medical school was created there; science followed at Marischal in 1892.

The merger had one famous casualty. James Clerk Maxwell had been Professor of Natural Philosophy at Marischal since 1856. In 1858 he married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the Marischal principal, and in 1859 he won the Adams Prize for the work showing that Saturn’s rings must consist of countless small particles. When the colleges combined there were two natural philosophy professors and room for one. Maxwell was the junior appointment, and he was let go — principal’s son-in-law or not.

He took a post at King’s College London the same year and there began the electromagnetic work that would reorganise physics. Marischal, with the calm of hindsight, later called him the most famous and influential professor Aberdeen has ever had. It is one of the better examples in Scottish institutional history of a decision that was administratively reasonable and historically absurd.

The Granite Claim

The Marischal College building on Broad Street is the visual signature of the Granite City. It was built in two campaigns: Archibald Simpson’s Tudor-Gothic quadrangle in Rubislaw granite between 1837 and 1844, and Alexander Marshall Mackenzie’s soaring perpendicular Gothic frontage between 1893 and 1906. Since 2011 it has housed Aberdeen City Council, leased for 175 years for £4.7 million.

The 1497 Chair and the First Full-Body MRI

Aberdeen’s oldest documented first is the Mediciner’s chair of about 1497: the earliest Regius, or royally founded, professorship in the English-speaking world. The caveats are real. The Mediciner’s duties were far wider than a modern professor’s, and medical teaching at Aberdeen was intermittent for long stretches afterwards. The chair is a genuine institutional milestone, not evidence of a continuous medical school running since the fifteenth century. A related boast — the first dedicated chair of natural history in the English-speaking world — should be treated with more caution still.

The modern equivalent is far better documented. On 28 August 1980, a team under John Mallard and Francis Smith produced the first clinically useful scan from a full-body magnetic resonance imaging machine built at Aberdeen. Magnetic resonance imaging as a field had many contributors and several competing firsts, so the precise wording matters: Aberdeen’s claim is the first clinically useful whole-body scan, and it holds.

Reid, Bain and Five Nobel Laureates

Thomas Reid, founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, took his MA at Marischal in 1726, taught at King’s from 1751, co-founded the Aberdeen Philosophical Society — the Wise Club — published the Inquiry into the Human Mind in 1764, and then succeeded Adam Smith in the Glasgow chair of moral philosophy. Alexander Bain, the first Regius Professor of Logic at Aberdeen and twice Lord Rector, founded Mind, the first journal of philosophy and psychology.

Five Nobel laureates are associated with the University: Frederick Soddy (Chemistry; professor 1914–1919), J.J.R. Macleod (Medicine 1923, for insulin, with Banting), George Paget Thomson (Physics 1937, electron diffraction; professor 1922–1930), John Boyd Orr (Peace 1949, of the Rowett Institute) and Richard Synge (Chemistry 1952, partition chromatography, also Rowett). Also Aberdeen: the botanist Robert Brown of Brownian motion, the mathematicians James Gregory and Duncan Liddel, Patrick Manson, the father of tropical medicine, Alexander Ogston, who identified Staphylococcus aureus, and James Blair, founder of the College of William & Mary.

The rectorship, student-elected since 1860, has run from Andrew Carnegie and Winston Churchill through Clarissa Dickson Wright, the first woman to hold it, to the folk singer Iona Fyfe, elected in November 2024. Its ceremonial peculiarity is unimprovable: the new rector is carried through Old Aberdeen aloft on a bull named Angus. Queen Camilla has been Chancellor since 2013, the first woman in the post.

Aberdeen Today

The University now has about 15,450 students in the 2025 HESA cycle — 9,815 undergraduates and 4,115 postgraduates — drawn from more than 130 nationalities. Foresterhill, shared with Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, is one of the largest health campuses in Europe. Energy research is the other centre of gravity, as it would have to be in the self-described energy capital of Europe: the Centre for Energy Transition works across oil and gas, carbon capture, hydrogen and decommissioning. Aberdeen was first in the UK for theology and religious studies and strong in public health in REF 2021, and holds thirteen Regius chairs, tied with Glasgow for the most in the UK.

Rankings put it in a wide band depending on the table: 262nd in QS 2026, down from 236th; the 201–250 group in Times Higher Education 2025; and anywhere from roughly 18th in the Guardian’s 2026 domestic guide to the low thirties in the Complete University Guide.

It is also, at the time of writing, under real financial strain, and this article says so plainly rather than ending on a flourish. The University reported a deficit of around £4.3 million for 2024/25 after a voluntary severance round and a recruitment freeze, and roughly 443 permanent posts have gone over two years. On 28 May 2026 the Principal, Peter Edwards, and senior governor Gary McRae told staff that the University Court had agreed a £10 million savings plan under which up to 111 full-time academic posts could be lost, with staffing set by student-staff ratios of 20:1 in STEM and 25:1 elsewhere, aiming to break even by 2028. An independent review has separately raised concerns about culture. The institution that survived the Reformation, the Restoration and a forced merger is having a hard decade.

Timeline

1. 10 Feb 1495

   Alexander VI issues the foundation bull

   Granted to James IV after Elphinstone's petition; 1494 by Old Style reckoning

2. c.1500

   Hector Boece appointed first principal

   A Paris-trained historian brought north to run the new college

3. c.1497

   The Mediciner's chair is established

   The first royally founded chair of medicine in the English-speaking world

4. c.1505

   Teaching reckoned to begin

   The basis for the University's 500-years-of-teaching celebration in 2005

5. 1569

   King's College purged of Catholic staff

   Principal Alexander Anderson ejected; Alexander Arbuthnot succeeds him

6. 2 Apr 1593

   Marischal College chartered

   George Keith founds a Protestant town college in New Aberdeen; ratified 21 July

7. 1641

   Charles I creates the Caroline University

   A forced merger of the two colleges that does not outlive the Restoration

8. 1661

   The Caroline union lapses

   Restoration legislation annuls it; the rivalry resumes for two more centuries

9. 1787

   William Ogilvie proposes union

   The “rebel professor” is voted down by seven of ten King's professors

10. 1837–1844

    Archibald Simpson builds the Marischal quadrangle

    Rubislaw granite, Tudor Gothic

11. 1856

    Maxwell appointed at Marischal

    Professor of Natural Philosophy; marries the principal's daughter in 1858

12. 1859

    Maxwell wins the Adams Prize

    For proving Saturn's rings must be composed of many small particles

13. 15 Sep 1860

    King's and Marischal united

    The Act ranks the united University from King's foundation of 1495

14. 1892

    A science faculty is added at Marischal

    Arts and divinity at King's, law and medicine at Marischal

15. 1893–1906

    Mackenzie's Broad Street frontage completed

    The perpendicular Gothic facade that made Marischal a civic icon

16. 1923

    J.J.R. Macleod shares the Nobel Prize

    For the discovery of insulin, with Frederick Banting

17. 28 Aug 1980

    The world's first clinically useful full-body MRI scan

    John Mallard and Francis Smith's machine at Aberdeen

18. 2011

    Marischal becomes Aberdeen City Council HQ

    Leased to the council for 175 years for £4.7 million

19. 2025

    Peter Edwards becomes Principal

    Taking over in November amid a serious financial retrenchment

Did You Know?

• The new Rector of Aberdeen is carried through Old Aberdeen on the back of a bull called Angus — one of the few installation ceremonies in Britain that requires livestock.
• Marischal College's granite boast started life bigger: a promotional caption of about 1906 called it the largest granite building in the world, not the second-largest.
• Aberdeen and Glasgow are tied for the most Regius chairs of any UK university, with thirteen each.
• James Clerk Maxwell was made redundant here in 1860 while married to the principal's daughter.
• Since 2011 the grandest university building in Aberdeen has not been a university building at all — Marischal is the city council's headquarters, on a 175-year lease.
• There is a persistent urban legend that Marischal College was Hitler's favourite British building and reserved as his residence. It has no known source and no evidence behind it.
• Queen Camilla has been Chancellor since 2013, the first woman to hold the office in the University's history.

Honest Caveats

The granite ranking is a tradition, not a measurement. Marischal is Aberdeen’s largest granite building, which is what the official listing says. Everything beyond that is repetition of an old promotional line, and the category itself has never been defined.

The 1497 chair needs its qualifiers. First Regius professorship in the English-speaking world: yes. Continuous medical school from 1497: no. The related natural history claim is weaker again and is not asserted here.

Marischal’s founding was not a confessional counter-attack. King’s had been Protestant since 1569, and the modern scholarship reads 1593 as institutional modernisation and aristocratic patronage rather than religious warfare.

The MRI claim must keep its adjective. Aberdeen built the first full-body scanner to produce a clinically useful image, in August 1980. Magnetic resonance imaging had many parents, and a flat “Aberdeen invented the MRI scanner” overstates it.

The Hitler story is a myth. There is no evidence that Marischal College was Hitler’s favourite British building or earmarked as his residence, and the legend has no traceable origin.

The financial figures are current and moving. The deficit, savings plan and post reductions described above are dated to 2025 and May 2026, and will change.