Anderson’s Institution

When John Anderson, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow, died in January 1796, he left almost everything he owned to found a new kind of college in the city. It would be devoted to useful learning, teaching practical science to the working men and women who were building Glasgow’s industries, and it would be open to people who could never hope to enter the university. Anderson’s Institution, as it became known, grew through a series of changes of name into one of the great technical colleges of the world, and in 1964 it became the University of Strathclyde.

Jolly Jack Phosphorus

John Anderson was born in 1726 in the manse at Rosneath, on the Gare Loch, the son of a minister. He studied at the University of Glasgow, served on the government side during the Jacobite rising of 1745, and returned to the university as a professor, first of ecclesiastical history and from 1757 of natural philosophy, the subject we would now call physics. He held that chair for nearly forty years.

Anderson loved experiments, machines and inventions. He encouraged the young James Watt, who was working as an instrument maker at the university, in the work that led to his improvements to the steam engine. He was acquainted with Benjamin Franklin and in 1772 installed the first lightning conductor in Glasgow. His textbook, Institutes of Physics, went through five editions in ten years.

What made him unusual was his determination to share science with ordinary working people. Alongside his university teaching he gave evening lectures for artisans and mechanics, packed with demonstrations, and his enthusiasm for explosions and fireworks earned him the nickname Jolly Jack Phosphorus. He was also a political radical who supported the French Revolution, designed a new cannon that was presented to the revolutionary government in Paris, and suggested sending revolutionary pamphlets into Germany by balloon.

Anderson was a difficult colleague who quarrelled often with the university authorities. In his will he left his estate to found a second institution in Glasgow that would do what he believed the university failed to do: teach practical knowledge to anyone who wanted it.

A college of useful learning

Anderson’s Institution opened in 1796. His estate was smaller than his ambitions, and the institution began modestly, but it quickly found its purpose. Its evening classes in chemistry, natural philosophy and mechanics attracted large audiences of working men, and women were admitted to its lectures from early on. In 1828 it renamed itself Anderson’s University, a title it had no legal right to use but which reflected its founder’s dream.

Its teachers included some of the leading scientists of the age. The chemist Thomas Graham taught there before moving to London, and his assistant James Young went on to found the shale oil industry. In 1823 a group of its students and supporters broke away to found the Glasgow Mechanics’ Institution, one of the first in Britain, which was eventually reunited with it.

David Livingstone

The institution’s most famous student was a young mill worker from Blantyre. David Livingstone had worked in a cotton mill from the age of ten, studying in the evenings, and in the 1830s he attended classes in medicine and chemistry at Anderson’s University in preparation for his career as a medical missionary. He went on to become the most celebrated explorer of his age. His story became the perfect illustration of what John Anderson had wanted: a working man rising through useful learning.

The Royal Technical College

In 1887 Anderson’s University merged with several other institutions, including the Mechanics’ Institution, to form the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. It became a national leader in engineering, chemistry and applied science, training the engineers, chemists and managers of Glasgow’s shipyards, foundries and works. Its great building on George Street, begun in 1903 and completed in 1912, was at the time the largest building for technical education in Europe. In 1912 the college became the Royal Technical College, and in 1956 the Royal College of Science and Technology.

Students of the college could study for degrees of the University of Glasgow, with which it was associated, and its graduates spread across the world. Among those connected with it was John Logie Baird, who studied there before going on to demonstrate television.

The University of Strathclyde

In 1964, under the leadership of its principal, the nuclear physicist Sir Samuel Curran, the college received a royal charter as the University of Strathclyde, merging at the same time with the Scottish College of Commerce. It was the first technological university in Britain, and it took its name from the ancient kingdom of the Clyde valley. Over the following decades it expanded rapidly across the Townhead area of the city, and in 1993 it absorbed Jordanhill College of Education.

The university has not forgotten its founder. Its city centre site is called the John Anderson Campus, and its library is the Andersonian Library. John Anderson himself is buried in the Ramshorn churchyard on Ingram Street, a short walk from the university that grew out of his will. Glasgow’s older university is described on our University of Glasgow page.

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