Book excerpt: Excerpt from Studies in the History and Development of the University of Aberdeen: A Quatercentenary Tribute Paid by Certain of Her Professors of Her Devoted Sons When it was decided to celebrate in 1906 the four hundredth anniversary of Elphinstone's foundation, the Committee entrusted with the necessary preparations resolved to publish one or more books, to signalise the occasion and to illustrate the history and work of the University. The volume now issued - one of a set of four - is an outcome of that resolution. The papers contributed attempt, at different lengths and by varied methods, to give some glimpses of ends aimed at and of results attained in the University's five faculties of Arts, Science, Divinity, Law and Medicine. The contributors consist of eight members of the present Senatus Academicus, and of four outsiders who in recent years have concerned themselves with the past of their Alma Mater. A collection of essays need not profess to traverse a whole field. Readers must not imagine that Aberdeen theology ceased with the Aberdeen Doctors, that literary studies are unknown in the University, or that mathematics and physics are forgotten in the Colleges where Maclaurin and Clerk Maxwell taught. That these and other branches of the University's activity are not discussed here is due partly to the limits imposed by treatment in a single volume, and partly to the varying amounts of leisure and of inclination possessed by those most competent to speak. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.