Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova Dashkova

In 1777 Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova Dashkova arrived in Scotland with her son Paul (Pavel Mikhailovich Dashkov). Her son immediately began studies at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1779 the Princess, still resident in Edinburgh, gave a collection of Russian commemorative medals to mark the occasion of the graduation of Paul as a Master of Arts.

The medals, over 150 in number and all made of copper, were entrusted first to John Robison (1739-1805), Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who was instructed to make a catalogue of them. In the early 1770s, Robison had very briefly held the Chair of Mathematics in the Imperial Naval Cadet Corps at Kronstadt, where he had been given the rank of Colonel.

The medals were only handed back to the University after Robison's death in 1805. If a catalogue was ever made by Robison it did not survive.