The first holder of the chair was famed Scottish astronomer Alexander Wilson, who put forward the theory that the entire universe rotated around its centre (which was later found to be true for galaxies but not the universe), and discovered that sunspots viewed near the edge of the Sun's visible disk appear depressed below the solar surface, a phenomenon still referred to as the Wilson effect.
Wilson employed his second son, Patrick, as his assistant and intended successor in 1782, with the approval of the university but not of the Crown.
Grant died in 1892 and was succeeded by Ludwig Becker, a German scientist originally from Bonn, who had moved to Scotland in 1885 as director of the observatory at Dunecht in Aberdeenshire.
In 1937, William Smart was appointed to the chair, having previously been John Couch Adams Astronomer at the University of Cambridge.
In 2010, the university marked the chair's 250th anniversary with a week of public lectures, an exhibition on inaugural holder Alexander Wilson in the Hunterian Museum.,[3] and by hosting the 2010 National Astronomy Meeting.