Robert Adamson

Robert Adamson (19 January 1852 – 5 February 1902) was a Scottish philosopher and Professor of Logic at Glasgow. Early life The philosopher Robert Adamson was born in Kingsbarns in Fife, Scotland. His father Robert Adamson (d. 1855) was a Scottish solicitor, active in Dunbar, Coldstream, and later in Edinburgh. His mother Mary Agnes Buist (1809 - February 11, 1876) was the daughter of David Buist, factor to George Baillie-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Haddington (1802-1870). Robert Adamson and Mary Agnes Buist were married on November 21, 1843 at Tyninghame, East Lothian, Haddingtonshire, Scotland. In 1855 Mrs. Adamson was left a widow with small means, and devoted herself entirely to the education of her six children (Helen, Ann, John, David, Robert, and Laurence). Of these, Robert was successful from the first. At the end of his school career he entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of fourteen, and four years later graduated with first-class honours in mental philosophy, with prizes in every department of the faculty of Arts. He completed his university successes by winning the Tyndall-Bruce scholarship, the Hamilton fellowship (1872), the Ferguson scholarship (1872) and the Shaw fellowship (1873). After a short residence at Heidelberg (1871), where he began his study of German philosophy, he returned to Edinburgh as assistant first to Henry Calderwood (1830-1897) and later to Alexander Campbell Fraser (1819-1914). He joined the staff of the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition) (1874) and studied widely in the Advocates' Library. Professorial appointments In 1876 he came to England as successor to William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) in the chair of logic and philosophy, at Owens College, Manchester. In 1883 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. In 1893 he went to the University of Aberdeen, and finally in 1895 to the chair of logic at the University of Glasgow, which he held till his death.