John Wilkie of Foulden was a descendent of Robert Wilkie (c1548-1611), principal of St Leonard’s College in the University of St Andrews. He inherited the rights of presentation to the Wilkie Bursary established by his…
David Baxter (1793-1872) was born in Dundee to William Baxter (1767-1854) and Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Gorrell (1763-1804). He was one of eight children but often considered ‘one of Dundee’s greatest sons’. Baxter initially…
David Berry (1795–1889) came from a Cupar farming family, and became Australia’s first millionaire. In 1836, he (and two other brothers and two sisters) emigrated to join their older brother Alexander in New South…
Alexander Berry (1781-1873) was born on 30 November 1781, to a Cupar farming family. He attended Cupar Grammar School, then studied at the University of St Andrews from 1796-1798, followed by a year studying medicine…
In 1896, John Hay gave £5,000 to enable the University to buy the house known as Scores Park, to become the official residence of the Principal of the University. Hay had become well-known to the University of St…
John Gray was unusual for being one of the very few repeat donors to the University, funding a university prize, bursary and Chair between 1794 and his death in 1811. While scholars have taken an interest in Gray for…
A donor to the University of St Andrews, alumnus Andrew Bell’s life began in the ‘Auld Grey Toon’, and he travelled around the world, from North America to India, being shipwrecked along the way. His employment as a…
If you take the A90 from Perth towards St Andrews, you will pass an imposing ruin perched high on a clifftop, overlooking the sheer drop to the Tay valley and road below. This is the Kinnoull Tower, linked to the…
In 1720, James Brydges, first duke of Chandos, gave £1,000 to the University of St Andrews to endow a new chair. During the early 1720s, Chandos was a director of (and investor in) the slave-trading Royal African…
Taken in isolation, the life and career of the renowned mineralogist Matthew Forster Heddle (known as ‘Forster’) could hardly appear more Scottish or Scotland-bound. Born in 1828 in Hoy to two old Orkney families,…