Notable alumni
The University of Glasgow’s School of Chemistry has a proud history of producing pioneering scientists, influential educators, and industry leaders whose impact has reached far beyond the laboratory.
From Nobel Prize winners to founders of modern scientific disciplines, our alumni have shaped the course of chemistry, medicine, energy, and public understanding of science across the globe.
This page highlights just a few of the distinguished individuals who once studied or taught here — each a testament to the School’s enduring legacy of excellence, curiosity, and innovation.
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William Cullen, M.D.
Department Founder (1747); Lecturer in Chemistry, 1747-55
Mr. Dunlop having represented the necessity of having Chemie taught in this University, he proposed at the same time that the thirty pounds sterling of the Professor of Oriental Languages salary that was saved during the time he was abroad with whatever the University should think fit to add thereto might be allotted to the buying of the Necessary Apparatus for practical Lectures in Chemie and building furnaces etc. for the same. And the said proposal is to be considered in the University meeting the 28th of this month.
Senate Minutes (5 January 1747)
Dr. Cullen and Mr. Carrick having attended the meeting and given their opinion about the Apparatus necessary for teaching Chemistry, the meeting being satisfied with the account they gave of it, Appoint the thirty pounds sterling of the salary of the Professor of Oriental Languages saved while Mr. Dunlop was abroad to be appropriated for purchasing the said Apparatus, as also twenty two pounds sterling out of the College revenues, that the sum of fifty two pounds may be made up for that use...
Senate Minutes (11 February 1747)
The above named Committee are appointed to consider in what manner the Thirty pounds sterling saved of the Professor of Oriental Languages salary while Mr. Dunlop was abroad, can be raised so as to be payed before the College rises to Dr. Cullen and Mr. Carrick for the building of a Laboratory and purchasing vessels etc. for teaching Chemistry to which use it had been appropriated by the University meeting the 11th of February last.
Faculty Minutes (18 June 1747)
The committee appointed 18th June having observed that the thirty pounds sterling of the vacant salary of the Professor of Oriental Languages is payable out of Crop 1744 and therefore cannot presently be raised; and that it is necessary that a sum be issued to Doctor Cullen and Mr. Carrick before the rising of the College for the purposes mentioned in the Act of 18th June last; The Faculty appoint the twenty two pounds sterling allowed by the University meeting to be added to the forsaid thirty pounds sterl. to be payed to Dr. Cullen and Mr. Carrick. And a Precept was signed on Mr. Morthland to pay the said sum to them.
Faculty Minutes (25 June 1747)
Dr. Cullen having received about 2 years ago fifty two pounds sterling to be laid out in building furnaces and fitting up a Laboratory and purchasing the necessary vessels for it, it was now reported that he had upon the 21st current acquainted the Faculty of the success of this attempt to begin Chemical Lessons in the University, and the University meeting now return him thanks for the great care and pains he has been at in giving Chemical Lessons and explaining them constantly by the most useful and necessary Chemical Processes and Experiments. And the Doctor having represented that the above mentioned £52 had been all expended in building the Laboratory and buying the things that were spent in the Experiments and repairing the necessary waste of the glasses and other instruments, but that he had expended a much greater sum himself in purchasing cucurbits, boltheads and a great many other instruments. The University meeting Do hereby acknowledge that he has just right to these instruments and may dispose of and use them as he thinks fit.
Senate Minutes (26 June 1749)
It was reported that Dr. Cullen designed to continue his Lessons in Chemistry providing the University would give him some allowance to support the necessary expence attending the making chemical experiments and processes, which report is to be considered next meeting.
Senate Minutes (1 November 1749)
Joseph Black, M.D.
Lecturer in Chemistry, Glasgow University, 1756-66
Noted for his fundamental work on latent and specific heats and for his discovery of carbon dioxide. Below is a brief biographical sketch, extracted from local sources by Professor Alan Cooper.
His life
Joseph Black was born in Bordeaux on 16 April 1728, one of fifteen children. His father was John Black, an Ulster wine merchant of Scots descent based in Bordeaux (presumably for obvious reasons), and his long-suffering mother, Margaret Black, was from Aberdeenshire (also a member of a wine-trading family). When he was twelve, young Joseph was sent off to school in Belfast to learn Latin and Greek, and subsequently, aged 16, enrolled at Glasgow University in 1744 to study arts. After four years of this, his father persuaded Joseph to take up something more useful, so he chose medicine. The professor of medicine in Glasgow at this time was William Cullen who, the year before (1747), had instituted the first lectures in Chemistry.
Black wrote later: "Dr Cullen about this time began also to give lectures in chemistry which had never been taught in the University of Glasgow and finding that I might be usefull to him in that Undertaking he employed me as his assistant in the laboratory".
Black moved to Edinburgh in 1752 to further his medical studies, but returned to Glasgow in 1756 as Professor of Anatomy and Botany, and Lecturer in Chemistry, when William Cullen was appointed Professor of Medicine in Edinburgh. The following year, Black was appointed Professor of Medicine in Glasgow (actually, he arranged to "exchange" chairs with the professor of medicine because he didn't feel competent to teach anatomy or botany). He remained in Glasgow until 1766 when he succeeded Cullen to the chemistry and medicine chairs in Edinburgh.
He never married, though it appears that he was "of a gentle and pleasing countenance", was popular with the ladies, and "performed on the flute with great taste and feeling". Black was a great frequenter of clubs, usually suitable for "highly respectable literary gentlemen", though it was apparently not unknown for him and his companions (who included Adam Smith, David Hume, Alexander Carlyle, James Hutton, amongst other celebrities of the time) occasionally, and accidentally, to visit less salubrious premises.
His research
It is during the early Glasgow years (1750-52) that it seems Black began his work on the chemistry of "magnesia alba" (a basic magnesium carbonate), which he later submitted for his MD thesis in Edinburgh, and which includes the discovery of what we now call carbon dioxide - he called it "fixed air". These experiments involved the very first careful gravimetric (weight) measurements on changes brought about when heating magnesia alba (with release of CO2) and reacting the products with acids or alkalis. This foreshadowed Lavoisier's work, and laid the foundation for modern chemistry. (Because this work was submitted for a medical degree, Black also felt obliged to include a section on magnesia alba as a purgative and antacid.)
On returning to Glasgow as professor in 1756, Black met up with James Watt (of steam engine fame - then "mathematical instrument maker to the University"), and this seems to have stimulated the next phase of his work involving the concept of latent heat, and the first steps in calorimetry. Here again, it was the quantitative aspects of his work which led to his discoveries, particularly in the careful measurement of heat. "He waited with impatience for the winter" 1 in Glasgow so that he could do experiments on the freezing and melting of water and water/alcohol mixtures that led to the concept of latent heat of fusion. He did similar work establishing the idea of latent heats of vaporization, leading to the general concept of heat capacity or specific heat. These early steps in thermodynamics went on alongside James Watt's developments of improved steam engines, and the two were in constant communication.
His teaching
Joseph Black was a popular and effective teacher, and many examples of notes from his lectures still survive. Most of his Glasgow students followed him to Edinburgh when he moved there in 1766. He was noted for his lecture-demonstrations, many of them based on his latest and ongoing researches on magnesia alba and heat effects. Typically he lectured five times a week, about 128 lectures in all, from November to May each year, attracting students from across Europe and America. The fact that his Edinburgh chemistry job was unsalaried, with income derived from student fees, probably provided reasonable incentive for him to make his lectures popular!
His day job
And while all this was going on, outside the University he was known as Dr. Black, the eminent medic "much employed as an able and most attentive physician". Amongst his patients were David Hume (the famous philosopher) and the first nurse of the juvenile Walter Scott. The latter was diagnosed with consumption (tuberculosis) and subsequently sacked from the job, lest she infect young Scott.
His end
Black himself was never particularly healthy, suffering lung problems from childhood infections, and rheumatic problems in later life. Unusually maybe for those days, he became a vegetarian in later life and seemed to suffer from vitamin D deficiency until he moved house to the country, where the milk from grass-fed, "free range" cows contained more vitamin D than those raised in dark cow-byres in the city. He died, in Edinburgh, on 6 December 1799, and is buried in Greyfriars churchyard.
Further reading
[All available in the Chemistry Branch Library]
- Simpson, A.D.C. (1982) "Joseph Black 1728-1799: a commemorative symposium" (Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, 1982)
- Cochrane, T. (1966) "Notes from Doctor Black's lectures on Chemistry 1767/8" (ed. D.McKie; ICI Ltd. Pharmaceuticals Division, Cheshire, 1966)
- Kent, A. (editor) "An Eighteenth Century Lectureship in Chemistry" (Jackson, Son and Co., Glasgow, 1950)
John Monteath Robertson, C.B.E., F.R.S.
Gardiner Professor of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, 1942-70
John Monteath Robertson ("JM") was a pioneer in the field of X-ray crystallography and the founder of organic crystallography.
Among many other achievements, he is noted for the development of heavy-atom and isomorphous-replacement methods for solving the phase problem in chemical crystallography, thereby laying the foundations for subsequent determination of the structures of proteins and other biological macromolecules by X-ray diffraction.
In 1939 (Nature, 143, 75) he predicted that the structure of insulin would be solved in this way - a task finally accomplished by Dorothy Hodgkin and her Oxford group in 1969.
Achievements
- Gardiner Professor 1942-70
- F.R.S. 1945
- Royal Society Council 1954-56
- Davy Medal 1960
- CBE 1962
- Longstaff Medal of the Chemical Society 1966
- Paracelsus Medal of the Swiss Chemical Society 1971
- Gregori Aminoff Medal 1962
- President of the Chemical Society 1962-64
Frederick Soddy
Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, 1904-14
A pioneering chemist and Nobel Laureate, Frederick Soddy served as Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at the University of Glasgow from 1904 to 1914. During his time here, he conducted groundbreaking research on radioactivity and isotopes, work which laid the foundation for our modern understanding of nuclear chemistry.
Soddy’s collaboration with Ernest Rutherford earlier in his career led to the formulation of the theory of atomic disintegration. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921.
His decade at Glasgow marked a period of remarkable scientific advancement and lasting impact on the field.
Alumni memories
Read about some of alumni's favourite memories of their time at the School of Chemistry.