Which university elected Fleming rector in 1951?

The University of Edinburgh elected Alexander Fleming rector in 1951. He held the office from 1951 to 1953, several years after his discovery of penicillin had made him one of the world’s best-known scientists.

The rector is an elected representative of a Scottish university’s students, rather than the institution’s chief academic or administrative officer. Edinburgh’s rectoral tradition has often attracted prominent public figures, and Fleming’s election placed a pioneering medical researcher in a role that connected him directly with students and university life.

Fleming had strong Scottish roots: he was born at Lochfield farm near Darvel, Ayrshire, in 1881. By the time he became rector, he had been knighted in 1944 and had shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. His Edinburgh term ended in 1953, two years before his death in London.