V. Part of a letter from Mr. Macky, Professor of History, to Mr. MacLaurin, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, and by him communicated to the President of the Royal Society; being an extract from the books of the Town-Council of Edinburgh, relating to a disease there, supposed to be venereal, in the Year 1497

1743 ◽  
Vol 42 (469) ◽  
pp. 420-421

If the Veneral Disease was never known in Europe till the Siege of Naples 1495, it must have made a very quick Progress through Europe in a short time; for in 1497, I find it raging in Edinburgh , and our King and his Council terribly alarmed at this contagious Distemper, as appears from a Proclamation of King James the IVth, in the Records of the Town-Council of Edinburgh .

Author(s):  
George L. Montgomery

During the two hundred years under review, medical education in Scotland evolved gradually from an apprentice system to become the prerogative of the universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, named in the order of their foundation. Of those, the University of Edinburgh was not only the last to be founded, it differed also in that its administration initially was by the Town Council. It was an Act passed by that body on 9 February 1726, that established the Charter of the Medical Faculty of the University. Four Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, namely John Rutherford, Andrew Sinclair, Andrew Plummer and John Innes were appointed foundation professors, the first two to chairs of the theory and practice of medicine, Plummer and Innes to chairs of medicine and chemistry. All four had been pupils of Boerhaave.


1914 ◽  
Vol 7 (110) ◽  
pp. 299-300
Author(s):  
C.G. Knott

John Napier's Logarithmorum Canonis Mirifici Descriptio was published in 1614 ; and it is proposed to celebrate the tercentenary of this great event in the history of mathematics by a Congress, to be held in Edinburgh on Friday, 24th July, 1914, and following days.The Celebration is being held under the auspices of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on whose invitation a General Committee has been formed, representing the Royal Society of London, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Town Council of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Actuaries, the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, the Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, the University College of Dundee, and many other bodies and institutions of educational importance.The President and Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh have now the honour of giving a general invitation to mathematicians and others interested in this coming Celebration.


1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
C. Piazzi Smyth
Keyword(s):  

The portions of sheet-lead above mentioned had attracted my attention on the days following the 4th of February, when engaged in repairing some damage which had then occurred to the electric wires connecting the Nelson Monument and the Observatory; and finding that plumbers (employed by the Town-Council) were removing the old lead and substituting new in its place, and being also encouraged by Professor P. G. Tait, who with me visited the spot, to believe that the markings which had been discovered were electrically of unusual interest, I lost no time in applying to Mr J. D. Marwick, town-clerk, for those portions of the leaden covering which contained the marks in question, with the View of presenting them to the Royal Society.


1954 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-200 ◽  

Otto Meyerhof was born on 12 April 1884 in Berlin and died in Philadelphia on 6 October 1951 at the age of 67; he was the son of Felix Meyerhof, who was born in 1849 at Hildesheim, and Bettina Meyerhof, nee May, born in 1862 in Hamburg; both his father and grandfather had been in business. An elder sister and two younger brothers died long before him. In 1923 he shared the Nobel prize for Physiology (for 1922) with A. V. Hill. He received an Hon. D.C.L. in 1926 from the University of Edinburgh, was a Foreign Member (1937) of the Royal Society of London, an Hon. Member of the Harvey Society and of Sigma XI. In 1944 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. Otto Meyerhof went through his school life up to the age of 14 without delay, but there is no record that he was then brilliant. When he was 16 he developed some kidney trouble, which caused a long period of rest in bed. This period of seclusion seems to have been responsible for a great mental and artistic development. Reading constantly he matured perceptibly, and in the autumn of 1900 was sent to Egypt on the doctor’s advice for recuperation.


1958 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  

John Graham Kerr was born on 18 September 1869, at Arkley, Herts, the son of James Kerr, M.A., a former Principal of Hoogly and Hindu College, Calcutta, and of Sybella Graham, of Hollows, Dumfriesshire. He was third in a family of four with three sisters. His father was a well-known educationalist and the author of various works dealing with a number of topics including Indian educational problems, English orthography and aspects of human nature, and Thomas Carlyle. Graham Kerr, as he was known throughout the greater part of his life, lost his mother in early childhood and grew up under the influence of his father who although his tastes were mainly literary had a broad interest in general science, especially in natural history and evolution, in which he was widely read. His father superintended the early stages of his education, including latin and mathematics, and encouraged the reading of such books as Darwin’s The voyage of the Beagle , Waterton’s Wanderings , Wallace’s Amazon and Malay Archipelago , etc. In addition, his library contained a large selection of classical works, especially poetry and history, and Graham Kerr was brought up in a general atmosphere of literary culture. His schooling began at the parish school of Dalkeith, Midlothian, under William Young, a good example of the old-fashioned type of parish schoolmaster who did not hesitate to give special time and attention to any boy who in his opinion possessed the natural capacity to benefit by his teaching. After a short time at the Collegiate School, Edinburgh, he passed on to the Royal High School, where he was specially influenced by Munn, the mathematics master under whose tuition he became Dux of the Fifth Form. He subsequently enrolled in the University of Edinburgh and first concentrated on higher mathematics and natural philosophy. He then studied geology, botany and zoology and finally decided to follow out the curriculum in medicine. This was interrupted when on a wintry afternoon in February 1889, this young medical student of nineteen, returning home from his classes picked up a copy of Nature at the book-stall in Waverley Station, and read an announcement which in his own words ‘determined the whole future of my life’.


1887 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Cargill G. Knott

In the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1874–75 there is a short paper on the “Electrical Resistance of Iron at a High Temperature.” It is the record of certain experiments made by three of us, then students in the Physical Laboratory of the University of Edinburgh; and its conclusion is that there is a peculiarity in the behaviour of iron as an electric conductor at the temperature of a dull red heat. At this temperature other physical peculiarities are known to exist, particularly as regards its thermal expansion, its thermal capacity, and its specific heat for electricity. The discovery of these striking properties we owe respectively to Dr Gore, Professor Barrett, and Professor Tait.


Author(s):  
D. M. Henderson

Welcome to Edinburgh and this second symposium on the plant life of SW Asia, supported by the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Botanic Garden and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. It is fifteen years since the first symposium was held as part of the Garden's tercentenary and now at this occasion you have an opportunity to consider progress, to renew old friendships and to make new ones. That should be easy, for the list of participants shows a wonderful representation from all the countries of SW Asia and also of the institutes in Europe and America involved in SW Asian studies. Unfortunately, not all of our friends are here for since we last met we have lost quite a few: we particularly miss Professor Michael Zohary and Professor Per Wendelbo, who died alas, a relatively young man, far too soon.


1882 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 293-294
Author(s):  
Tait

The Chairman closed the session with the following remarks:—I have now, in a very few words, to close this session, and in so doing I beg to remind you that it is the ninety-ninth session of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This Society, which was originally an offshoot of the University of Edinburgh, was first started, on the suggestion of Principal Robertson, towards the close of 1782. So that in the latter part of next year you will be able to announce your hundredth birthday. The Society came into existence just one year after its late distinguished President, Sir David Brewster, who was born in December 1781. While individuals pass away, age brings no decrepitude, but rather the reverse, to universities and scientific bodies.


1743 ◽  
Vol 42 (468) ◽  
pp. 325-363

The Author’s first Design, in composing this Treatise, was to establish the Method of Fluxions on Principles equally evident and unexceptionable with those of the antient Geometricians, by Demonstrations deduced after their Manner, in the most rigid Form, and by illustrating the more abstruse Parts of the Doctrine, to vindicate it from the Imputation of Uncertainty or Obscurity.


1957 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 192-202

Sir William Wright Smith, the eminent botanist, who was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1944 to 1949, died on 15 December 1956, in his eighty-second year. For thirty-four years he held the dual appointment of Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh and Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; he was also Queen’s Botanist in Scotland. Born at Parkend near Lochmaben on 2 February 1875, the son of a Dumfries-shire farmer, he early acquired the interest in living things and a love for the country, which (though he was to spend the greater part of his life in Edinburgh) remained predominantly with him all his days. His school was the Dumfries Academy where he went till the age of sixteen, when he left for Edinburgh as first University Bursar. Every day he had to travel to school by train, yet he found time to explore his native countryside, and his regard for natural history was by no means confined to plants. For example, he enjoyed watching birds and fishing, or, with one or two companions, guddling for trout or, again, in a leisure hour lying on some sunny bank by a convenient rabbit warren with book and gun. Though not robust he played conventional games, and he was fond of cycling, sometimes covering long distances, once at least more than a hundred miles in one day.


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