Talbot Rice Gallery, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL
Until 1861 Edinburgh University’s museum was housed in what is now the Talbot Rice Gallery. The collection was founded by Sir Robert Sibbald in 1692 and greatly expanded by Robert Jameson, Edinburgh’s professor of natural history from 1804 to 1854. It contained the most important natural history collection in Britain after London’s British Museum. Jameson was notorious for denying access to scholars to whom he took a dislike, including a number of members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He also famously ‘mislaid’ the geological collection of James Hutton, whose theories he did not agree with.
Admission to the Talbot Rice Gallery is free.
The Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh in Robert Jameson’s day.
Portrait of Robert Jameson (1774–1854) by one of his students, c.1831.