Election of Sir Alexander Fleming as Rector, 1951

Penicillin mould presented to the Students' Representative Council by Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) when elected Rector, Edinburgh University Library (Medals No. 110)

In 1951, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) became the first scientist to be elected Rector of Edinburgh University.

The election of actor and director Alastair Sim (1900-1976) as Rector in 1948 inaugurated a new era. Encouraged by Sim's success, students increasingly nominated national or international celebrities and figures from the worlds of broadcast media and the performing arts. No fewer than eight candidates stood for the following election in 1951, offering by far the largest and widest ranging field to date:

• Sir Alexander Fleming - Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of Penicillin
• Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah, Aga Khan III (1877-1957) - Imam of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim community and former President of the League of Nations and of the All-India Muslim League
• Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) - Novelist best-known for Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, and Brideshead Revisited
• Sydney Goodsir Smith (1915-1975) - New Zealand-born Scots-language poet and a leading figure in the second wave of the Scottish Literary Renaissance
• Jimmy Logan (1928-2001) - comic actor and all-round entertainer
• Stephen Meredith Potter (1900-1969) - academic and writer of the comic self-help manuals The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, Lifemanship, and One-Upmanship
• John Cameron (1900-1996) - former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates who would later become an important member of the University Court
• Sir Andrew Hunter Arbuthnot Murray (1903-1977) - former Lord Provost of Edinburgh and one of the founders of the Edinburgh International Festival

Fleming, who enjoyed the near unanimous support of medical students, won a resounding victory. He polled 1096 votes, comfortably beating his nearest rival the Agan Khan (660 votes). Perhaps the very diversity of the field ensured that campaigners stressed the publicity and prestige that candidates might bring to the university rather than what they might contribute as working Rectors. Although neither Evelyn Waugh nor Sydney Goodsir Smith polled a significant number of votes in the final count, rivalry between their supporters dominated the campaign. This unfortunately assumed a sectarian character (endorsed by neither candidate), as Waugh's backers were predominantly Catholic and Smith's Protestant. Smith's father, Sir Sydney Alfred Smith (1883-1969), Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine from 1928 to 1953, would win the next Rectorial Election in 1954.

Related Pages

• Separation of Roles of Principal and Professor of Divinity, 1620
• Transfer of Rectorship to Lord Provost of Edinburgh, 1665
• Universities (Scotland) Act 1858
• First Election of Rector by Student Body, 1859
• Election of Lord Kitchener as Rector, 1914
• First 'Non-Political' Rectorial Election, 1932
• Rectorial Election, 1936
• First Celebrity Rector, 1948
• Resignation of Rector Malcolm Muggeridge, 1968
• Election of Gordon Brown as Rector, 1972
• First Woman Rector, 1988

Other University Events in 1951

• Integration of Royal (Dick) Veterinary College

Sources

• Donald Wintersgill, The Rectors of the University of Edinburgh 1859-2000 (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2005)