Glasgow University served all of these students by preparing them for professions: law, medicine, civil service, teaching, and the church.

[12] The alumni of the University of Glasgow include some of the major figures of modern history, including James Wilson, a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence, 3 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom (William Lamb, Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Bonar Law), 3 Scottish First Ministers (Humza Yousaf, Nicola Sturgeon and Donald Dewar), economist Adam Smith, philosopher Francis Hutcheson, engineer James Watt, physicist Lord Kelvin, surgeon Joseph Lister along with 4 Nobel Prize laureates (in total 8 Nobel Prize winners are affiliated with the University) and numerous Olympic gold medallists, including the current chancellor, Dame Katherine Grainger.

In 1560, during the political unrest accompanying the Scottish Reformation, the then chancellor, Archbishop James Beaton, a supporter of the Marian cause, fled to France.

Teaching at the university began in the Chapter House of Glasgow Cathedral, subsequently moving to nearby Rottenrow, in a building known as the "Auld Pedagogy".

The university was given 13 acres (5.3 ha) of land belonging to the Black Friars (Dominicans) on High Street by Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1563.

[15] By the late 17th century its building centred on two courtyards surrounded by walled gardens, with a clock tower, which was one of the notable features of Glasgow's skyline—reaching 140 feet (43 m) in height[16]—and a chapel adapted from the church of the former Dominican (Blackfriars) friary.

John Anderson, while professor of natural philosophy at the university, and with some opposition from his colleagues, pioneered vocational education for working men and women during the Industrial Revolution.

The Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) was opened at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on 29 March 2017, including a Clinical Innovation Zone spanning 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of collaboration space for researchers and industry.

In 1460, the university received a grant of land from James, Lord Hamilton, on the east side of the High Street,[22] immediately north of the Blackfriars Church, on which it had its home for the next four hundred years.

The original site on the High Street was sold to the City of Glasgow Union Railway and replaced by the college goods yard.

The growth and prosperity of the city, which had originally forced the university's relocation to Hillhead, again proved problematic when more real estate was required.

The Sir Alwyn Williams building, designed by Reiach and Hall, was completed at Lilybank Terrace in 2007, housing the School of Computing Science.

Built at a cost of £90.6 million, it opened in April 2021 and is named for James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn a degree in medicine and a University of Glasgow alumnus.

[36][37] A further investment of over £900 million is being made across the Gilmorehill campus, focused mainly on redeveloping the 5.7-hectare (14-acre) site between University Avenue and Dumbarton Road that was occupied by the Western Infirmary between 1874 and 2015.

It offers a modular undergraduate curriculum, leading to one of a small number of liberal arts degrees, as well as providing the region's only access to postgraduate study.

The Stevenson Building on Gilmorehill opened in 1961 and provides students with the use of a fitness suite, squash courts, sauna, and six-lane, 25-metre swimming pool.

In the past, this position has been a largely honorary and ceremonial one, and has been held by political figures including William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, Bonar Law, Robert Peel, Raymond Poincaré, Arthur Balfour, Charles Kennedy and 1970s union activist Jimmy Reid, and latterly by celebrities such as TV presenters Arthur Montford and Johnny Ball, musician Pat Kane, and actors Richard Wilson, Ross Kemp and Greg Hemphill.

When the elections were run in December, Mordechai Vanunu was chosen for the post,[46] even though he was unable to attend due to restrictions placed upon him by the Israeli government.

The Clerk of Senate, who has a status equivalent to that of a Vice-Principal and is a member of the Senior Management Group, has responsibility for regulation of the university's academic policy, such as dealing with plagiarism and the conduct of examinations.

None of these are affiliated to the National Union of Students: membership has been rejected on a number of occasions, most recently in November 2006, on both economic and political grounds.

The SRC is responsible for representing students' interests to the management of the university, to local and national government, and for health and welfare issues.

The GUU's focus is mainly towards people involved in sports and debates (as among its founders were the Athletic Association and Dialectic Society), the QMU is one of Glasgow's music venues, and has played host to Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Biffy Clyro and Franz Ferdinand.

Throughout the year, the MSA also organizes social events and peer support for the wide range of subjects studied by the university's mature students.

[106] Many distinguished figures have taught, worked and studied at the University of Glasgow, including seven Nobel laureates and three Prime Ministers, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Bonar Law.

Famous names include the physicist Lord Kelvin, his pupil, and later partner of the Carnegie Steel Corporation, George Lauder, 'father of economics' Adam Smith, engineer James Watt, inventors Henry Faulds and John Logie Baird, chemists William Ramsay, Frederick Soddy and Joseph Black, biologist Sir John Boyd Orr, philosophers Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, mathematician Colin Maclaurin, ethnologist James George Frazer, missionary David Livingstone, writers James Boswell, John Buchan, A. J. Cronin, Amy Hoff, Tobias Smollett and Edwin Morgan, and surgeon Joseph Lister.

Famous orientalist and president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Henry Beveridge, University of Aberdeen founder Bishop William Elphinstone also graduated from Glasgow.

In June 1933 Albert Einstein gave the first Gibson Lecture, on his general theory of relativity; he subsequently received an honorary degree from the university.

In more recent times, the university was the focus of the "Glasgow Group" of poets and literary critics, including Philip Hobsbaum, Tom Leonard and Alasdair Gray.

The university boasts one of Europe's largest collections of life scientists,[citation needed] as well as having been the training ground of numerous politicians including former Prime Ministers Bonar Law and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, former First Minister Donald Dewar, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and former Rector Charles Kennedy, Defence Secretaries Liam Fox and Des Browne, the founder of the UK Independence Party Alan Sked, former Labour Party leader John Smith, Business Secretary Vince Cable, former leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Menzies Campbell, and former First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf.

The trophy was donated by the Old Boys of Allan Glen's School, is presented to the winning candidate at one of the year's graduation ceremonies or flagship events.