In this talk, Robert Anderson explores how the academic world and industry came together in unpredictable ways in Scotland in the later eighteenth century.
This was not something that would happen in the more limited cultural world of the two English universities. In particular, two medical professors, William Cullen and Joseph Black, interacted with promoters and improvers in a way which resulted in significant economic change.
It is interesting to compare this situation with Manchester and Birmingham, where there was plenty of industrial and intellectual activity but there were no universities, as such.
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