The University of Strathclyde: The Place of Useful Learning

The Will of 1795

Anderson had quarrelled with the University of Glasgow, and his will of 7 May 1795 reads like a reply. It named 81 trustees and left the bulk of his estate to the public “for the good of Mankind and the Improvement of Science” through an institution “to be denominated Anderson’s University”. He is reported to have stipulated that nobody connected with the University of Glasgow should be employed there, and that the new body should be open to women and to the working class.

The ambition was for four faculties — arts, medicine, law and divinity — with nine professors apiece. The estate came to roughly £1,000. Anderson died on 13 January 1796; his trustees met in March and opened a much smaller institution in 1796–1797, with Dr Thomas Garnett as first professor of natural philosophy, lecturing to audiences described at the time as of both sexes.

That last point deserves exactness rather than enthusiasm. Women could attend from the start, and for the 1790s that is remarkable. It was not matriculation for degrees, which came far later everywhere in Britain — a distinction of the same kind as the LLA scheme at St Andrews. Overstating it does the institution no favours, because the documented version is already unusual.

The Most Complicated Lineage in Scotland

No other Scottish university has an ancestry this involved. Medical teaching began at Anderson’s around 1799–1800 under Birkbeck and later Andrew Ure, growing into Anderson’s Medical School. In 1828 the institution renamed itself Anderson’s University, partly delivering the founder’s wish for a second university in Glasgow. Lacking a royal warrant, it was later obliged to drop the word — sources give 1877 or 1887 — and became Anderson’s College.

In 1886 or 1887 the non-medical part amalgamated with the College of Science and Arts (the former Mechanics’ Institution), the Young Chair of Technical Chemistry, Allan Glen’s Institution and the Atkinson Institution to form the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. That body was renamed the Royal Technical College when George V approved the title on 9 February 1912; its Royal College Building on George Street, begun in 1903 and finished in 1912, was then the largest building for technical education in Europe. In 1956 it became the Royal College of Science and Technology, whose undergraduates could take either University of Glasgow degrees or the Associate of the Royal College.

It is also worth being pedantic about names. The 1796 institution was Anderson’s Institution; “Andersonian Institute” and “Andersonian University” are later or informal usages, and the formal renaming to Anderson’s University belongs to 1828.

Birkbeck and the Mechanics’ Institutes

George Birkbeck (1776–1841), a Yorkshire-born Quaker physician trained at Edinburgh, succeeded Garnett in 1799. From 1800 he gave free lectures to working mechanics under the title The Principles and Powers of Mechanical Energies, often described as the first engineering course taught at the institution. The fourth annual lecture drew about five hundred people. He left for London in 1804; the class did not stop.

In 1823 the mechanics’ class broke away to constitute the Glasgow Mechanics’ Institution, and in the same year Birkbeck helped found the London Mechanics’ Institution and became its first president. That body was renamed the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution in 1866, Birkbeck College in 1907, joined the University of London in 1920, and is today Birkbeck, University of London. There are minor and essentially unresolvable priority arguments between the Glasgow and London institutions, but both run back to the same Glasgow classroom, which makes Anderson’s Institution a genuine founding node of the mechanics’ institute movement.

The Charter of 1964

On 14 August 1964, at Balmoral, Elizabeth II signed the Royal Charter that merged the Royal College of Science and Technology with the Scottish College of Commerce — itself descended from the Glasgow Athenaeum Commercial College — and created the University of Strathclyde. Two firsts attach to that signature, and both survive checking: it was the UK’s first technological university, and the first wholly new university founded in Scotland since Edinburgh in 1583, a gap of 381 years. Dundee, which demerged from St Andrews, along with Heriot-Watt and Stirling, came later in the same decade.

The name looks past Glasgow altogether. It honours the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde, the strath of the Clyde, centred on Dumbarton Rock and later Govan — a regional identity rather than a civic one, and a deliberate way of not competing with the older university across town. It predates the Strathclyde local-government region of 1975–1996, which took the name from the same source.

The first Principal was Sir Samuel Curran (1964–1980), the nuclear physicist who invented the scintillation counter; the Curran Building, housing the Andersonian Library, is named for him, and the city-centre campus is the John Anderson Campus. Strathclyde is governed by a University Court established under the 1964 Charter, with the Senate as its academic body, and — unlike the four ancient universities — it has no elected Rector.

The Toast Nobody Can Source

One line follows Anderson everywhere: that he raised a glass to “the People, the true and original source of all political power”. It is a good line, it fits the man, and it cannot be traced. It does not appear in any primary source, in the University of Strathclyde archives, in the scholarly biographies, or in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The phrasing echoes the general Buchananite and Lockean strand of Scottish constitutional thought, which suggests paraphrase or conflation rather than quotation.

Under this site’s standard, that makes it legend. It would take a primary citation — James Muir’s John Anderson: Pioneer of Technical Education (1950), or Thomas Furniss’s 2017 chapter on reading Anderson’s will, are the likeliest places — to move it. The loss is small. A man who gave the French Convention a cannon labelled a gift from science to liberty, and left his estate to educate tradesmen, does not need the toast.

Strathclyde Today

Strathclyde has close to 30,000 students from more than 140 countries, making it Scotland’s third-largest university by enrolment, on an income of £430.6 million in 2024–25, of which £119.5 million came from research grants and contracts. It reached joint 230th in the QS World University Rankings 2027, its highest ever and a rise of 21 places, after climbing 30 places to joint 251st the year before — the largest rise of any UK institution in the top 300. It was UK University of the Year in the Daily Mail guide for 2026 and Scottish University of the Year in the Times and Sunday Times guide for the same year.

The research record matches the mission. In REF 2021, 89 per cent of Strathclyde’s research was rated world-leading or internationally excellent against a sector average of 84 per cent, and the School of Government and Public Policy produced the highest-rated submission in the UK, with 62 per cent of its research world-leading and 100 per cent of its impact outstanding. Strathclyde Business School, descended from the Royal College’s Department of Industrial Administration of 1947, was the first business school in Scotland to hold triple-crown accreditation and has held it since 2004. Pharmacy, at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, ranked 25th in the world in the QS subject tables for 2026, one of eleven Strathclyde subjects in the global top 200. The University has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes — 1996, 2019, 2021 and 2023 — and is the only institution to have been named Times Higher Education UK University of the Year twice, in 2012 and 2019.

Its alumni and predecessor rolls read like an index to this collection: John Logie Baird, trained at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College; David Livingstone, at Anderson’s medical school; Henry Faulds of fingerprint identification; James “Paraffin” Young; James Blyth of wind power; Sir Dugald Clerk of the two-stroke engine; the Nobel laureate William Ramsay; Thomas Graham of Graham’s Law, who taught at Anderson’s College; and, in our own time, the political scientist Sir John Curtice and Dame Elish Angiolini, Scotland’s first female Lord Advocate. Professor Stephen McArthur, a two-time Strathclyde graduate who works on artificial intelligence in energy systems, became Principal in 2025, succeeding Sir Jim McDonald after sixteen years; the Chancellor is the Rt Hon the Lord Smith of Kelvin.

Timeline

1. 1745

   Anderson graduates MA at Glasgow

   He also serves as a Hanoverian officer during the Jacobite Rising

2. 1757

   Anderson becomes Professor of Natural Philosophy

   The longest-serving holder of the Glasgow chair in the eighteenth century

3. 1772

   Glasgow's first lightning conductor installed

   One of the documented acts of a genuinely practical scientist

4. 1786

   Institutes of Physics published

   Five editions in ten years

5. 1791

   Anderson presents a cannon to the French Convention

   A recoil-damping design, its model inscribed “The Gift of Science to Liberty”

6. 7 May 1795

   Anderson signs his will

   Leaving his estate to the public “for the good of Mankind and the Improvement of Science”

7. 13 Jan 1796

   Anderson dies in Glasgow

   Trustees and executors first meet in March

8. 1796–1797

   Anderson's Institution opens

   Thomas Garnett appointed first professor of natural philosophy

9. 1799

   George Birkbeck succeeds Garnett

   A Yorkshire Quaker physician trained at Edinburgh

10. 1800

    Birkbeck's free lectures for mechanics begin

    “The Principles and Powers of Mechanical Energies”; the fourth annual lecture draws about 500

11. 1823

    The mechanics' class breaks away

    Forming the Glasgow Mechanics' Institution; Birkbeck founds the London institution the same year

12. 1828

    Renamed Anderson's University

    Partly realising the founder's wish for a second university in Glasgow

13. 1877/1887

    The title “University” is dropped

    No royal warrant supported it; sources differ on the date

14. 1886/1887

    The Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College forms

    An amalgamation with the College of Science and Arts, the Young Chair, Allan Glen's and the Atkinson Institution

15. 1887

    Anderson's medical school separates

    It becomes Anderson College of Medicine

16. 9 Feb 1912

    The Royal Technical College is named

    George V approves; the Royal College Building is Europe's largest technical education building

17. 1947

    The medical school is absorbed by Glasgow

    Not by Strathclyde — the most common confusion in this lineage

18. 1956

    The Royal College of Science and Technology

    Students take Glasgow degrees or the ARCST

19. 14 Aug 1964

    The Royal Charter is signed at Balmoral

    Merging with the Scottish College of Commerce to create the University of Strathclyde

20. 2012 and 2019

    THE UK University of the Year, twice

    The only institution to have won it more than once

Did You Know?

• Strathclyde graduates wear a black pre-Reformation supertunica rather than a scarlet gown — a direct descendant of Anderson's “anti-toga” classes for working men.
• Anderson gave the French National Convention a recoil-damping cannon whose model hung in their hall inscribed “The Gift of Science to Liberty”.
• He also built balloons to carry revolutionary pamphlets over the German frontier.
• Birkbeck, University of London begins in a Glasgow classroom: George Birkbeck's free mechanics' lectures at Anderson's Institution from 1800.
• The Royal College Building on George Street was, when finished in 1912, the largest technical education building in Europe.
• Strathclyde has no elected Rector — the student-elected office found at the four ancient Scottish universities does not exist here.
• The name comes from the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde, centred on Dumbarton Rock, not from the 1970s local-government region.
• Anderson's will reportedly barred anyone connected with the University of Glasgow from being employed at his new institution.

Honest Caveats

The toast is legend. No primary source, archive or scholarly biography records Anderson toasting the People as the source of all political power. It is presented here as unverified, and would be upgraded only on a citation.

Several lineage dates are unsettled. Sources differ on 1877 versus 1887 for the loss of the title “University”, 1886 versus 1887 for the technical-college amalgamation, and 1946 versus 1947 for the medical school’s absorption. Those variances are shown rather than resolved by preference.

The medical school belongs to Glasgow’s history. Anderson College of Medicine went to the University of Glasgow, and any claim that Strathclyde absorbed it should be treated with suspicion.

Women’s access means attendance. The 1790s provision was openness to attend lectures. Formal matriculation for degrees is a much later development, and conflating the two would misdescribe an already notable fact.

“Athens of the North” is Edinburgh. The epithet is sometimes transferred to Glasgow institutions in loose writing; it does not belong here.

Rankings, income and student numbers are current to mid-2026 and will move with the next data release.