page_title: Robert Cullen, Lord Cullen
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Cullen, Lord Cullen / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Burial enclosure of William and Robert Cullen The inscription above the entrance to the enclosure notes that it was erected in 1864 as a memorial to William by the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and his great granddaughter Marion Fenella Marjoribanks. He was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in 1710, and died at Kirknewton in 1790. After an ‘apprenticeship’ in Glasgow, service as a ship's surgeon, and a period as assistant to an apothecary in London, he practised medicine from 1732 in various places in Scotland and in 1747 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry in Glasgow, and in 1751 to the Chair of Medicine. In 1755 he moved to Edinburgh and held the Chair until 1766. He then became Professor of the Institutes of Medicine (Physiology) and of the Practice of Medicine until his resignation in 1789. So he did not have much of a retirement. He was a man of great personal charm, a lively personality, very articulate, and with a rich imagination, so was a good lecturer. His contributions to medicine and his widely used textbooks earned him an international reputation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1777 [Information from a biography by W.P.Doyle on the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry website]. Robert, Lord, Cullen, possibly a son [1742-1810], was, according to his plaque, ‘an eminent judge, elegant scholar, and accomplished gentleman’.
context_page_description: Robert Cullen, Lord Cullen FRSE was a Scottish judge. He played a key role, along with his father William Cullen, in obtaining a royal charter for the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, resulting in the formation of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.
context_section_description: Born on 22 September 1742, in Edinburgh, the son of Anne Johnstone (d.1786) and eminent physician and chemist William Cullen. His brother was the physician Henry Cullen. The family lived at Mint Close on the Canongate, home of the old Scottish Mint.
  Robert was educated at the High School and then the University of Edinburgh. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1764, and served as a Senator of the College of Justice (1796-9), and as Lord of Justiciary (1799–1810). His position as Senator followed the death of James Erskine, Lord Alva.
  In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
  He died on 28 November 1810 and was buried in Kirknewton churchyard, south-west of Edinburgh.
caption: Burial enclosure of William and Robert Cullen, Kirknewton
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