ABERDEEN, UNIVERSITY OF

Founded in 1494-1495 at Aberdeen, Scotland, by Bishop Elphinstone, who obtained from Pope Alexander VI sanction to found a university near his cathedral church in Old Aberdeen. From the beginning the university provided teaching in arts, divinity, law, and medicine. Aberdeen being the first university in Great Britain with a professorship or its equivalent in medicine. In 1505 Elphinstone founded within the university the College of St. Mary in Nativity, later known as King’s College, and Elphinstone himself became the first chancellor of the university. The first principal was the historian Hector Boece, or Boethius.