Professor John Stuart Blackie

John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895) became Professor of Humanity at Marischal College, and after a period of study in Germany (in 1839, where John Forbes White became his star pupil. His teaching was both inspirational and unusual as this account by one of his students reveals:

Looking at a drawing of the Apollo Belvedere or the Discobolus on the walls, he would describe it and its history in free, flowing Latin, and generally encourage us to stand up in the class and declaim, first more or less on his own lines, and afterwards by giving us another statue to be described in our own words, correcting errors at the close. … private reading in some less well known Latin author was the best reward of all. On these occasions he treated us as if we were his sons or younger brothers

Blackie studied for the Scottish bar and was later (from 1852-1882) Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University where he also founded and endowed a Celtic chair in 1882.