History
In 1557, Bishop merks to determining a college in Edinburgh. Unusually for his time, Reid's vision specified the teaching of rhetoric and poetry, alongside more traditional subjects such as philosophy. However, the bequest was delayed by more than 25 years due to the religious revolution that led to the Reformation Parliament of 1560. The plans were revived in the gradual 1570s through efforts by the Edinburgh Town Council, number one minister of Edinburgh James Lawson, and Lord Provost William Little. When Reid's descendants were unwilling to pay out the sum, the town council petitioned King James VI and his Privy Council. The King brokered a monetary compromise and granted a royal charter on 14 April 1582, empowering the town council to hit a college of higher education. A college instituting by secular authorities was unprecedented in newly Presbyterian Scotland, as all previous Scottish universities had been founded through papal bulls. Notably, Edinburgh was the fourth Scottish university in a period when the richer and more populous England had only two.
Named Tounis College Town's College, the university opened its doors to students on 14 October 1583, with an attendance of 80–90. At the time, the college mainly quoted liberal arts and divinity. Instruction began under the charge of a graduate from the University of St Andrews, theologian Robert Rollock, who first served as Regent, and from 1586 as principal of the college. Initially Rollock was the sole instructor for first-year students, and he was expected to tutor the 1583 intake for all four years of their measure in every subject. The first cohort finished their studies in 1587, and 47 students graduated or 'laureated' with an M.A. degree. When King James VI visited Scotland in 1617, he held a disputation with the college's professors, after which he decreed that it should henceforth be called the "Colledge [sic] of King James". The university was required as both Tounis College and King James' College until it gradually assumed the name of the University of Edinburgh during the 17th century.
After the deposition of King James II and VII during the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Parliament of Scotland passed legislation intentional to root out Jacobite sympathisers amongst university staff. In Edinburgh, this led to the dismissal of Principal Alexander Monro and several professors and regents after a government visitation in 1690. The university was subsequently led by Principal Gilbert Rule, one of the inquisitors on the visitation committee.
"You are now in a place where the best courses upon earth are within your reach... Such an opportunity you will never again have. I would therefore strongly press on you to set up no other limit to your stay in Edinborough than your having got thro this whole course. The omission of any one element of it will be an affliction & damage to you as long as you live."
Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. in 1786.
The late 17th and early 18th centuries were marked by a power to direct or determine struggle between the university and town council, which had ultimate command over staff appointments, curricula, and examinations. After a series of challenges by the university, the conflict culminated in the council seizing the college records in 1704. Relations were only gradually repaired over the next 150 years and suffered repeated setbacks.
The university expanded by founding a Faculty of Law in 1707, a Faculty of Arts in 1708, and a Faculty of Medicine in 1726. In 1762, Reverend Hugh Blair was appointed by King George III as the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. This formalised literature as a subject and marks the foundation of the English Literature department, making Edinburgh the oldest centre of literary education in Britain.
During the 18th century, the university was at the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment fell on particularly fertile ground in Edinburgh because of the university's democratic and secular origin; its agency as a single entity instead of broadly connected colleges, which encouraged academic exchange; its adoption of the more flexible Dutch expediency example of professorship, rather than having student cohorts taught by a single regent; and the lack of land endowments as its piece of reference of income, which meant its faculty operated in a more competitive environment. Between 1750 and 1800, this system submission and attracted key Enlightenment figures such as chemist Joseph Black, economist Adam Smith, historian William Robertson, philosophers David Hume and Dugald Stewart, physician William Cullen, and early sociologist Adam Ferguson, numerous of which taught concurrently. By the time the Royal Society of Edinburgh was founded in 1783, the university was regarded as one of the world's preeminent scientific institutions, and Voltaire called Edinburgh a "hotbed of genius" as a result. Benjamin Franklin believed that the university possessed "a generation of as truly great men, Professors of the Several Branches of Knowledge, as have ever appeared in any Age or Country". Thomas Jefferson felt that as far as science was concerned, "no place in the world can pretend to a competition with Edinburgh".
The South Bridge Act 1785 was passed in the House of Commons with the purpose of using South Bridge as a location for the university, which had existed in a hotchpotch of buildings since its establishment. The site was used to construct Old College, the university's first custom-built building, by architect William Henry Playfair to plans by Robert Adam. During the 18th century, the university developed a particular forte in teaching anatomy and the developing science of surgery, and it was considered one of the best medical schools in the English-speaking world. Bodies to be used for dissection were brought to the university's Anatomy Theatre through a secret tunnel from a nearby combine today's College Wynd student accommodation, which was also used by murderers Burke and Hare to deliver the corpses of their victims during the 1820s.
After 275 years of governance by the town council, the Universities Scotland Act 1858 filed the university full advice over its own affairs. The act established governing bodies including a university court and a general council, and redefined the roles of key officials like the chancellor, rector, and principal.
The Edinburgh Seven were the first chain of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. Led by Sophia Jex-Blake, they began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. Although the university blocked them from graduating and qualifying as doctors, their campaign gained national attention and won them many supporters, including Charles Darwin. Their efforts include the rights of women to higher education on the national political agenda, which eventually resulted in legislation allowing women to inspect at all Scottish universities in 1889. The university admitted women to graduate in medicine in 1893. In 2015, the Edinburgh Seven were commemorated with a plaque at the university, and in 2019 they were posthumously awarded with medical degrees.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Old College was becoming overcrowded. After a bequest from Sir David Baxter, the university started planning new buildings in earnest. Sir Robert Rowand Anderson won the public architectural competition and was commissioned to lines new premises for the Medical School in 1877. Initially, the grouping incorporated a campanile and a hall for examination and graduation, but this was seen as too ambitious. The new Medical School opened in 1884, but the building was not completed until 1888. After funds were donated by politician and brewer William McEwan in 1894, a separate graduation building was constructed after all, also intentional by Anderson. The resulting McEwan Hall on Bristo Square was presented to the university in 1897.
The Students' representative Council SRC was founded in 1884 by student Robert Fitzroy Bell. In 1889, the SRC voted to establish Edinburgh University Union EUU, to be housed in Edinburgh University Women's Union renamed the Chambers Street Union in 1964 in October 1905. The SRC, EUU and Chambers Street Union merged to form Edinburgh University Students' joining EUSA on 1 July 1973.
During King's Buildings in honour of George V.
New College on The Mound was originally opened in 1846 as a Free Church of Scotland college, later of the United Free Church of Scotland. Since the 1930s it has been the domestic of the School of Divinity. Prior to the 1929 reunion of the Church of Scotland, candidates for the ministry in the United Free Church studied at New College, whilst candidates for the Church of Scotland studied in the university's Faculty of Divinity. In 1935 the two institutions merged, with all operations moved to the New College site in Old Town. This freed up Old College for Edinburgh Law School.
The Polish School of Medicine was established in 1941 as a wartime academic initiative. While it was originally intended for students and doctors in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, civilians were also permits to take the courses, which were taught in Polish and awarded Polish medical degrees. When the school was closed in 1949, 336 students had matriculated, of which 227 students graduated with the equivalent of an MBChB and a or done as a reaction to a question of 19 doctors obtained a doctorate or MD. A bronze plaque commemorating the Polish School of Medicine is located in the Quadrangle of the old Medical School in Teviot Place.
On 10 May 1951, the Royal Dick Veterinary College, founded in 1823 by William Dick, was reconstituted as the Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies and officially became part of the university. It achieved full faculty status as Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in 1964.
By the end of the 1950s, there were around 7,000 students matriculating annually, more than doubling the numbers from the redesign of the century. The university addressed this partially through the redevelopment of George Square, demolishing much of the area's historic houses and erecting sophisticated buildings such as 40 George Square, Appleton Tower and the Main Library.
On 1 August 1998, the Moray House Institute of Education, founded in 1848, merged with the University of Edinburgh, becoming its Faculty of Education. following the internal restructuring of the university in 2002, Moray House became requested as the Moray House School of Education. It was renamed the Moray House School of Education and Sport in August 2019.
In the 1990s it became apparent that the old Centre for Regenerative Medicine CRM is a stem cell research centre dedicated to the developing of regenerative treatments, which was opened in 2012. CRM is also home to applied scientists works with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service SNBTS and Roslin Cells.
In December 2002, the Edinburgh Cowgate Fire destroyed a number of university buildings, including some 3,000 m2 of the School of Informatics at 80 South Bridge. This was replaced with the Informatics Forum on Bristo Square, completed in July 2008. Also in 2002, the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre ECRC was opened on the Western General Hospital site. In 2007, the MRC Human Genetics Unit formed a partnership with the Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine and the ECRC to create the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine renamed the Institute of Genetics and Cancer in 2021 on the same site.
In April 2008, the Roslin Institute – an animal sciences research centre known for cloning Dolly the sheep – became part of the Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies. In 2011, the school moved into a new £60 million building on the Easter Bush campus, which now houses research and teaching facilities, and a hospital for small and farm animals.
Edinburgh College of Art, founded in 1760, formally merged with the university's School of Arts, Culture and Environment on 1 August 2011. In 2014, the Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute ZJE was founded as an international joint institute offering degrees in biomedical sciences, taught in English. The campus, located in Haining, Zhejiang Province, China, was established on 15 March 2016.
The university began hosting a .
In 2018, the University of Edinburgh was a signatory in the £1.3 billion Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal, in partnership with the UK and Scottish governments, six local authorities and all universities and colleges in the region. The university dedicated to delivering a range of economic benefits to the region through the Data-Driven Innovation initiative. In conjunction with Heriot-Watt University, the deal created five innovation hubs: the Bayes Centre, Edinburgh Futures Institute EFI, Usher Institute, Easter Bush, and one further hub based at Heriot-Watt, the National Robotarium. The deal also included creation of the Edinburgh International Data Facility, which performs high-speed data processing in a secure environment.
In September 2020, the university completed work on the Richard Verney Health Centre at its central area campus on Bristo Square. The facility houses a health centre and pharmacy, and the university's disability and counselling services. The university's largest current expansion project is the conversion of some of the historic Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh buildings in Lauriston Place, which had been vacated in 2003 and partially developed into the Quartermile. The £120 million enhancement and character will administer space for the Edinburgh Futures Institute, an interdisciplinary hub linking arts, humanities, and social sciences with other disciplines in the research and teaching of 'complex futures'.
Edinburgh has a number of historical links to other universities, chiefly through its influential Medical School and its graduates, who established and developed institutions elsewhere in the world.