342 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
Robert M. Ferguson, Ph.D., LL.D. By Dr Andrew E. Scougal. 
(Read December 15, 1913.) 
Robert M £ Nair Ferguson was born at Airdrie, in July 1828. But he 
may be accounted as to all intents and purposes an Edinburgh man ; for 
his father removed to Edinburgh when Robert was only three years old, 
and it was in Edinburgh that the son was brought up and educated, and 
there that he had his home during all the rest of his life. 
From a very early period in his life the lad — or boy — would seem to 
have made up his mind to be a teacher. At the close of his primary 
school course as a pupil at the practising school attached to what was then 
the Free Church Training College at Moray House, he became a monitor 
in that school, then an assistant master there, and afterwards one of the 
lecturers on the Training College staff. During this period of training for 
the teaching profession — which lasted from 1843 to 1858 — he attended 
classes at the University and at the New College, proving himself to be a 
first-rate student and gaining the highest honours in philosophy, mathe- 
matics, and natural philosophy ; he passed the examination of King’s 
College, London, for a lectureship in physics and chemistry ; and, perhaps 
most important of all in view of what his main future work was to be, 
he studied in Germany under Professor Bunsen and other distinguished 
teachers, and finally graduated, in 1855, as a Doctor of Philosophy of the 
University of Heidelberg, with mechanics, physics, and chemistry as his 
special subjects. 
From his residence in Germany he brought back with him not only 
increased attainments in science, but also an intimate knowledge of 
German life and literature and such a command of the German language 
that he could use it really “ like a native.” He had also a good knowledge 
and command of French — an acquirement which doubtless had something 
to do with his being entrusted later on with the instruction in chemistry 
of three young Orleanist princes, the great-grandsons of Philippe Egalite. 
In 1858, at the age of thirty, he found a favourable opening for entering 
on what was to be the main work of his life. In that year he and his 
friend Mr Bickerton, in partnership, took over from Dr Alexander Reid 
the Edinburgh Institution (8 Queen Street, Edinburgh), a private secondary 
school which had already made for itself a good and widespread reputa- 
tion. Under its new headmasters the Institution steadily increased both in 
efficiency and in numbers, until it gained such a secure position among the 
