The University of Dundee: Mary Ann Baxter’s Conditions

Co-education, Precisely Stated

The university’s archivist Michael Bolik puts the documented fact plainly: “When University College, Dundee, was founded one of Mary Ann Baxter’s stipulations when she provided the endowment was the equal participation of the sexes. Consequently women have studied here since 1883.” His colleague Kenneth Baxter notes that co-education was “almost unheard of in the late Victorian era”. Both statements survive checking.

What does not survive is the promotional line that Dundee was the first university in the United Kingdom to educate men and women side by side. University College had no degree-awarding power of its own: its students initially took external degrees from the University of London and, from 1885, matriculated through St Andrews. The distinction that matters is between class admission, which Dundee genuinely offered women from its first session, and degree parity, which came nationally with the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889 and the first graduations of 1892–93. On that second measure, St Andrews is generally credited with the first Scottish woman to graduate on the same footing as men — Agnes Forbes Blackadder, MA in October 1895 — though, satisfyingly, she did much of her studying in Dundee.

The bounded version is still a strong story, because it produced people. Mary Lily Walker, the social reformer who mapped Dundee’s slum conditions; Ruth Wilson, later Young, who became Professor of Surgery in Delhi; and Margaret Fairlie, who in 1940 became the first woman to hold a professorial chair at any Scottish university, all came through the college. That is what a founding condition looks like fifty years later.

Seventy Years of Argument

A Royal Commission had recommended in 1878 that Dundee’s college be affiliated to St Andrews, and from 1885 its students could matriculate there. The Universities (Scotland) Act 1889 empowered commissioners to make the affiliation formal — but the 1890 arrangement was declared invalid by the House of Lords in 1895, because the 1881 deed remained in force while being at variance with the constitution of the University of St Andrews as a whole. A re-affiliation by Ordinance took effect on 1 October 1897.

Calling what followed a partnership would be too kind. The recurring flashpoint was medicine: whether the chairs of anatomy and physiology should sit in Dundee, in St Andrews, or in both. A Conjoint School of Medicine was established at Dundee in 1898, and the argument outlived everyone who started it. Underneath sat a status quarrel — Dundee’s conviction that it was treated as the junior partner against St Andrews’ conviction that the college had too much autonomy for a component part. D.C. Thomson’s Courier campaigned for Dundee independence for decades.

Principal Douglas Wimberley’s memo of 1947 made the case for separation openly. A Royal Commission under Lord Tedder, appointed in 1951 and reporting in 1952, led to the University of St Andrews Act 1953 and the creation of Queen’s College, Dundee in 1954 — named for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother — incorporating the Medical School, the Dental School and the Dundee School of Economics. The Robbins Report of 1963 supplied the national argument; in 1966 the University Court and the Queen’s College Council jointly petitioned the Privy Council; and on 1 August 1967 Queen’s College became the independent University of Dundee. The Queen Mother became its first Chancellor, and the students marked the day by processing up Dundee Law in red St Andrews gowns.

One unusual inheritance survived the split. Alone among post-1967 UK universities, Dundee kept the ancient Scottish governance furniture, including an elected student Rector, written into Article 5 of its 1967 Charter. Sir Peter Ustinov was elected the first Rector of the independent university in 1968; later holders include the Dundee-born actor Brian Cox (2010–2016), the cyclist Mark Beaumont, and Maggie Chapman MSP, elected in 2025.

The Life Sciences Powerhouse

Dundee’s modern identity rests overwhelmingly on biomedicine, and the claim is real rather than promotional. Sir Philip Cohen, recruited in 1971, built the field around protein phosphorylation; he founded the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit in 1990, now the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit under Professor Dario Alessi, and in 1998 co-founded the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy, an academia–pharmaceutical collaboration awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2006.

The buildings track the money. The Wellcome Trust Building opened in 1998 on £10 million from the Wellcome Trust, then the largest single donation ever made to a Scottish institution, topped up by a gift from Sir Sean Connery out of his fee for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The Sir James Black Centre followed in 2006 and the Discovery Centre in 2014, and the Drug Discovery Unit has worked since 2006 on neglected tropical diseases, alongside the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research. Professor Alessi’s work on LRRK2 and Parkinson’s disease and Professor Irwin McLean’s on the genetics of eczema and atopic asthma are representative of the output.

On the ranking claim, precision is required. The university states that for the second successive REF it was the top university in the UK for biological sciences according to Times Higher Education. In THE’s REF 2021 biological sciences GPA table, Dundee placed second with a GPA of 3.7, up from 3.5, behind the Institute of Cancer Research on 3.77. Both framings should be attributed to THE: “top in the UK” reflects a broader research-power reading, not the raw GPA order.

Faces, Forensics and Art

The second genuine strength is anatomical and forensic science. The Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, created in 2005 by Professor Dame Sue Black, became internationally known for forensic anthropology, human identification, facial reconstruction and the Thiel soft-fix embalming technique. Professor Caroline Wilkinson rebuilt the faces of Robert the Bruce and Richard III there. Sue Black led forensic work in Kosovo in 1999 and in the response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science is also based at Dundee.

Medicine consolidated at Ninewells Hospital from 1974, which integrated the medical school and became a centre for minimal-access surgery under Sir Alfred Cuschieri. The right wording there is pioneering rather than inventing — and the same applies to flat screens: Professors Walter Spear and Peter LeComber did the foundational work on amorphous-silicon thin-film transistors that underpins LCD displays, but commercialisation happened elsewhere.

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design is entirely a Dundee institution and worth claiming loudly, because it is often mislaid in Edinburgh. Its origins lie in the Dundee Technical Institute of 1888 and its formal foundation in 1892, when the art master Thomas Delgaty Dunn was appointed. It became independent of the technical institute in 1975, merged into the University of Dundee in 1994 while keeping its name and identity, and took its full present title in 1996. It is one of the leading art schools in the UK.

Two attributions need correcting whenever they appear. Sir James Black, Nobel laureate of 1988 for propranolol and cimetidine, studied medicine at University College, Dundee — but in the St Andrews era, so his 1946 medical degree is properly a St Andrews qualification; he later served as Dundee’s Chancellor from 1992 to 2006. Mary Slessor, the missionary to Calabar, was a Dundee jute-mill worker whose papers are held at Dundee Central Library and had no connection to the university at all. Genuine alumni include Nicholas Lydon, a Lasker Award winner and developer of imatinib, the musician Gary Lightbody and the director David Mackenzie.

The Games Myth

Dundee is famous worldwide as a games city, and the fame is deserved: Lemmings and the original Grand Theft Auto were made by DMA Design, later Rockstar North, and 4J Studios built the console versions of Minecraft there. None of that belongs to the University of Dundee. DMA’s founder David Jones studied at what is now Abertay University, and it was Abertay — then Dundee Institute of Technology — that launched the world’s first computer games degree in November 1997.

This is the single most common conflation attached to the institution, and it is worth stating flatly: the University of Dundee has real computing and design strengths, but the marquee games story is a city story and an Abertay story. The same care applies to the city’s other trophies. “City of Discovery”, the RRS Discovery and V&A Dundee, which opened in 2018, are civic assets, not university facilities.

The Crisis of 2024–2026

An institutional history that stopped in 2018 would be a brochure. From late 2024 the university fell into one of the most serious financial and governance failures in recent UK higher education, with a deficit of roughly £30–35 million against a structural baseline of about £63 million, and hundreds of posts — 632 full-time equivalents at the peak of the proposals — put at risk.

The independent Gillies Report, published on 19 June 2025, is a rare forensic public autopsy. It found “individual and collective failures in financial governance”, ethics breaches and ignored red flags; a “triumvirate” of executives who controlled what information reached the University Court; breaches of Bank of Scotland loan covenants that were reported neither to the Court nor to the Scottish Funding Council; a leadership culture described as “top-down, hierarchical and reportedly over-confident”; and dissent “routinely shut down”, with female staff who challenged the leadership sidelined and branded obstructive. The former principal Iain Gillespie told a Scottish Parliament committee in June 2025 that he had been “incompetent” in the role. The interim principal Shane O’Neill and members of the governing body resigned after publication, and Professor Nigel Seaton became interim principal.

The public response was unprecedented in the literal sense. The Scottish Government, through the Scottish Funding Council, made available up to £62 million cumulatively — £22 million of a £25 million package agreed in February 2025, plus up to £40 million in principle — using section 25 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 for the first time. The Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth told Parliament on 24 June 2025 that “the use of this power is unprecedented and has been made necessary by the exceptional circumstances at the University”, and that Dundee estimated its liquidity gap “to be in the region of between £45 million up to £60 million, across the next 2 academic years”. The episode prompted the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) Bill, strengthening the Funding Council’s oversight powers.

The wider context is a UK sector under strain from frozen fees and a collapse in international recruitment, and Aberdeen faced its own reckoning in the same period. But the Gillies Report is explicit that Dundee’s failures were substantially self-inflicted rather than purely external. Recovery was still under way in mid-2026, and every figure in this section should be read as provisional.

Timeline

1. 1863

   Baxter Park given to the city

   Mary Ann Baxter and her siblings; the family fortune came from linen and jute

2. 1878

   A Royal Commission recommends a Dundee college

   Affiliated to the University of St Andrews

3. 31 Dec 1881

   The Deed of Endowment is signed

   £140,000; co-education binding, divinity excluded, no religious tests

4. 5 Oct 1883

   University College, Dundee opens for teaching

   Women study there from the first session

5. 1885

   UCD students may matriculate at St Andrews

   The college had no degree-awarding power of its own

6. 1889

   Universities (Scotland) Act

   Empowers commissioners to affiliate UCD to St Andrews

7. 1895

   The House of Lords voids the 1890 affiliation

   The founding deed conflicted with the St Andrews constitution

8. 1 Oct 1897

   Re-affiliation takes effect by Ordinance

   The seventy-year union formally begins

9. 1898

   Conjoint School of Medicine established at Dundee

   Medicine becomes the central point of dispute

10. 1940

    Margaret Fairlie takes a chair

    The first woman to hold a professorial chair at a Scottish university

11. 1947

    The Wimberley Memo

    Principal Douglas Wimberley argues for independence

12. 1951–1953

    Tedder Commission and the St Andrews Act

    Leading to Queen's College, Dundee in 1954

13. 1 Aug 1967

    The University of Dundee becomes independent

    Students process up Dundee Law in red St Andrews gowns

14. 1971

    Philip Cohen arrives

    The beginning of Dundee's molecular life-sciences reputation

15. 1974

    Ninewells Hospital opens

    Integrating the medical school; later keyhole-surgery pioneering under Cuschieri

16. 1990

    MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit founded

    Now the MRC PPU, directed by Dario Alessi

17. 1994–1996

    Duncan of Jordanstone joins the university

    The art school keeps its name and identity

18. 1998

    Wellcome Trust Building opens

    £10m from Wellcome, plus a donation from Sir Sean Connery

19. 2006–2014

    Sir James Black Centre and Discovery Centre

    The Drug Discovery Unit begins work on neglected tropical diseases

20. 19 Jun 2025

    The Gillies Report is published

    A forensic public autopsy of the university's financial governance

Did You Know?

• Sean Connery put part of his Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves fee into the building that made Dundee a life-sciences centre.
• Dundee's students celebrated independence in 1967 by walking up Dundee Law wearing the red gowns of the university they had just left.
• Sir Peter Ustinov was elected the first Rector of the independent university in 1968 — a post Dundee inherited from the ancient Scottish universities and no other post-1967 UK university has.
• Patrick Geddes, the founder of modern town planning, was the college's professor of botany.
• The faces of Robert the Bruce and Richard III were reconstructed in a Dundee laboratory.
• Margaret Fairlie became the first woman to hold a professorial chair at any Scottish university, at Dundee, in 1940.
• Mary Ann Baxter died in 1884, less than a year after the college she paid for opened its doors.
• The Scottish Government used section 25 of the 2005 Act for the first time in its history to keep Dundee solvent.

Honest Caveats

The endowment total is genuinely unreconciled. The university’s older pages say £120,000, its current ones £140,000. This article favours £140,000 as the archive-based figure and names the alternatives rather than hiding them. The deed date is 31 December 1881; the “3 December 1881” that circulates is erroneous.

The women’s first is bounded. Co-education as a founding legal condition is the true and strong claim. “First UK university to educate men and women side by side” is marketing.

The biological sciences ranking claim is THE’s framing. On the raw REF 2021 GPA table Dundee is second, not first.

Two inventions need hedging, not headlines. Spear and LeComber’s transistor work underpins LCD screens without being the invention of the flat screen; Cuschieri’s Ninewells work pioneered minimal-access surgery without inventing it.

City achievements are not university achievements. Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings, the first games degree, the RRS Discovery and V&A Dundee all belong elsewhere in the city’s story.

Rankings and crisis figures move. QS placed Dundee =447th in its 2027 edition, having been in the low 400s, and Times Higher Education in the 301–350 band; the decline may partly reflect the financial crisis. Deficit, job losses, liquidity gap and total public support are all provisional as of mid-2026.