A 500 -year -old academic tradition really shouldn't
still be dictating the highest echelons of modern
university life. Yet here we are. Yeah, it's
quite the anomaly. It really is. So I want you
to imagine an incredibly exclusive VIP club for
the absolute brightest, most dedicated minds
in the world. Right. And the bouncer at the door
of this club is literally the British monarch.
That is a very accurate way to put it. Welcome
to today's deep dive. We are thrilled you are
joining us. Today we're opening up a comprehensive
Wikipedia article simply titled Regis Professor
and we are going to use it as the sort of historical
time machine. It is a deceptively simple premise,
really. We're examining a very specific list
of academic titles. But as we comb through this
material today, we're actually tracing the very
evolution of human learning. Exactly. We are
looking at how a royal tradition maps directly
onto the changing survival needs of civilization
over half a millennium. So our mission for this
deep dive is to unpack what this elite title
actually means, explore the quirks of its history,
and use these unique academic chairs to discover
exactly what types of knowledge society has valued
most all the way from the year 1497 up to 2016.
It's a fascinating lens through which to view
human progress. By looking at the specific subjects
that monarchs chose to elevate at specific points
in time, we get this unvarnished look at what
humanity considered essential for survival and
progress in those eras. Stripped of all the usual
narrative noise. Exactly. It's a beautifully
analytical way to view history. Okay, let's unpack
this. What exactly is a regis professor? Right,
getting down to basics. Basically, it's a university
professor in the United Kingdom or Ireland who
holds royal patronage. or appointment. And we
should clarify, it is a very unique feature of
academia in that specific part of the world.
Yeah, this isn't just an honorary degree handed
out for a good PR moment, right? Oh, not at all.
This is an active, fiercely contested academic
chair. The appointment process alone speaks volumes
about the weight this title carries. Because
it's an incredibly rigorous gauntlet. It really
is. The university and the national government,
they handle the initial heavy lifting. So that
means the global advertisements, the intense
peer review interviews vetting the absolute top
tier of international academics. Standard, highly
competitive academic stuff. Right. But they do
not make the final call. After all of that modern
bureaucratic and academic vetting, the final
appointment is actually made by the current monarch.
It's just such a fascinating bottleneck. You
survive the most grueling academic peer review
on the planet, but your final job offer requires
the literal signature of the crown. Yeah. Because
of that royal imprimatur, and because these professorships
are relatively rare, being appointed to a Regis
chair is considered the ultimate academic flex.
It really creates a very specific microculture
within these universities. And that microculture
includes an incredible naming convention. Oh,
this is my favorite part. These professors are
so elevated in the academic hierarchy that they
traditionally drop the word professor entirely.
They are addressed simply as Regis. I want you,
the listener, to just imagine that for a second.
Imagine walking into a high -stakes meeting and
introducing yourself using a single monarch -approved
Latin prefix. It's the academic equivalent of
being recognizable by just one name, like a pop
star. Exactly. It projects absolute authority.
But underneath that prestige, there is a very
strict philosophy governing why these chairs
even exist in the first place. They are not created
casually. No, they aren't. Let's look at the
origin story. The very first Regis Professorship
was founded in 1497 by the Scottish King James
V at the University of Aberdeen. And the field
is key here. It was in medicine. Right. What's
fascinating here is the incredibly strict criteria
required for creating a new chair. The source
makes it clear that they are only instituted
in disciplines that are judged to be fundamental
and for which there is a continuing and significant
need. Fundamental and continuing and significant
need. Yes. That implies the monarch and the government
are making a definitive declaration that a specific
field of study is crucial to the bedrock of their
society. Exactly. Yeah. And we can see exactly
what they meant by fundamental if we look at
the early chairs established at Cambridge and
Oxford in the 1540s. That list is a perfect snapshot
of the 16th century intellectual loadout. It
really is. At Cambridge and Oxford around 1540,
the subjects deemed worthy of a regis chair were
civil law, divinity, Greek, Hebrew, and physic.
When you analyze that specific grouping, it reflects
a deeply religious, classical, and foundational
view of education. So let's break that down.
Divinity. Divinity underscores the absolute central
role of theology and the church in 16th century
statecraft. It was inseparable from politics.
Then you have Greek and Hebrew. Right. And in
the context of the 1540s, this is the height
of the Renaissance humanist movement and the
Reformation. So they needed people who could
read the original texts. Exactly. The crown needed
scholars who could bypass the Latin Vulgate and
read ancient texts and biblical scriptures in
their original forms. It was about controlling
the narrative of the ancient world and religious
doctrine. Precisely. Then you add civil law,
which is obviously necessary for governing a
complex, growing society. Yeah, you need administrators.
You need a legal framework. And finally, physic,
which is basically the baseline need to understand
the human body and cure disease. Right. God,
the law. ancient wisdom, and raw physical survival.
It is a very tight... specific worldview. And
for a very long time, that worldview remained
relatively static. It did. The process of adding
a new Regis chair was incredibly slow, reflecting
a society that believed the pillars of knowledge
were essentially already established. But that
exclusivity, of course, bred intense institutional
rivalries. Oh, absolutely. Here's where it gets
really interesting, because the desperation to
attain that ultimate academic flex led to some
incredible posturing. crazy things for status.
There is a fantastic historical anecdote from
the source material. It's from 1708 involving
a man named William Scott Primus. He was the
first professor of Greek at the University of
Edinburgh. This is such an early masterclass
in academic vanity. It really is. So William
Scott Primus desperately wanted the clout. He
was widely referred to with the honorific Regis
professor. He let his peers call him that. He
didn't correct them. No, he opulated within the
university as if he held the royal warrant. But
there was one glaring problem. That's a minor
detail. He totally failed to secure the actual
grant from the crown. Right. Adopting the royal
branding without the royal paperwork. He just
faked it till he made it. It highlights the psychological
hold this title had on the academic elite. You
have this 18th century scholar strutting around
campus, absorbing the deference of his colleagues
while secretly knowing the monarch. has absolutely
no idea who he is. The fallout from that kind
of posturing when discovered would be devastating
to an academic reputation. Total career ruination.
But it shows that the title was viewed as the
only true validation of intellectual supremacy.
And speaking of validation, the geography of
these chairs also tells a complex geopolitical
story. We have to look at the anomaly regarding
Trinity College Dublin. Yeah, the Irish anomaly
is fascinating. Trinity College Dublin has several...
Deeply historic Regis chairs. Some very old ones.
Very old. A Regis professor of divinity established
in 1600, physic around 1637, laws in 1668. They're
undeniably woven into this ancient academic tradition.
Right. But because Ireland left the United Kingdom
in 1922, becoming its own independent state,
the British monarch no longer appoints the professors
to those specific Irish chairs. It operates like
a constitutional ghost limb. That's a great way
to put it. The chairs remain. The history is
deeply embedded in the institution. But the political
reality shifted drastically, severing that direct
line to the crown. The appointment mechanism
had to be fundamentally altered because the territory
was no longer under royal jurisdiction. It is
a perfect example of how these professorships
don't exist in a vacuum. No, they are tethered
to the political and geographic realities of
their time. Absolutely. And looking at geographic
realities and institutional pride, the undisputed
heavyweight champion of the Regis world is the
University of Glasgow. By a wide margin. They
currently possess the highest number of extant
Regis chairs of any university, holding 14. 14
chairs concentrated in one institution. is a
massive accumulation of royal patronage. It's
wild. It is an impressive concentration. And
looking at when Glasgow acquired many of those
chairs provides a perfect bridge to the next
major shift in human knowledge. Right, because
the definition of what was considered fundamental.
was about to undergo a massive transformation.
We move out of the era where Greek and divinity
dominated the conversation. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, the addition of new subjects
over the centuries perfectly maps human progress.
You can literally read the timeline of the scientific
and industrial revolutions just by looking at
the dates these new chairs were created. The
18th and 19th century boom makes this incredibly
clear. In 1785, Edinburgh gets a Regis Professor
of Astronomy. Which is key. This isn't just about
stargazing, right? This is the era of global
naval expansion. Yes. The crown needs advanced
navigation for the Royal Navy and for global
trade roads. Then, in the early 1800s, botany
and forensic medicine appear at Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Forensic medicine is particularly telling. How
so? Well, the 19th century city was growing rapidly.
Urbanization brought new types of crime, complex
public health crises, and a sudden need for state
-level medical jurisprudence. Oh, wow. The Crown
recognized that policing and public health required
rigorous scientific backing. That makes a lot
of sense. Then comes 1840 at the University of
Glasgow. A Regis Professor of Civil Engineering
and Mechanics is established. That 1840 chair
in civil engineering is a profound marker. It
really feels like a turning point. It shows the
monarchy and the government realizing that fundamental
knowledge was no longer purely about ancient
languages or classical law. The world was industrializing.
Past. Glasgow was becoming the workshop of the
world. They needed steam engines. They needed
shipyards. They needed vast railway networks.
So to maintain a continuing and significant need
for their society, they had to formally elevate
the applied sciences. That's exactly right. The
survival and prosperity of the British Empire
now depended on engineering. The Regis list acts
as a mirror, reflecting society's changing priorities
back in itself. When a society needs to construct
global infrastructure, it creates a Regis professor
of engineering. you just have to wonder about
the friction in the faculty lounges back then
oh i'm sure it was intense the traditionalists
the greek and latin scholars who had held the
royal ear for three centuries suddenly having
to share the regis title with mechanics and engineers
i'm sure there were some very strongly worded
letters but this slow steady evolution over centuries
brings us to the modern era where the tradition
absolutely shattered a complete paradigm shift
because for hundreds of years there were strict
unwritten rules about these chairs yes traditionally
regis chairs only existed in the seven ancient
universities of the uk and ireland places like
oxford cambridge aberdeen edinburgh glasgow right
it was an incredibly closed loop a vip section
within the vip club but queen elizabeth ii entirely
changed the game she democratized the prestige
she really did In October 2012, to mark her diamond
jubilee, celebrating 60 years on the throne,
it was announced that the queen would create
new Regis professorships. And crucially, they
wouldn't just be restricted to the ancient universities
anymore. Exactly. In January 2013, the full list
was announced. 12 new chairs. Creating 12 new
chairs in January 2013 was likely the largest
number ever established in one single year. Just
a massive influx. More were created in that singular
moment than were created in most entire centuries.
And it didn't stop there. In July 2015, it was
announced that even more Regis professorships
would be created to mark the Queen's 90th birthday,
which were officially awarded in 2016. This sudden
explosion of new chairs forces us to look very
closely at the subjects chosen. Remembering the
core criteria, these must be disciplines judged
to be fundamental and for which there is a continuing
and significant need. So what does this all mean?
When the Queen and the government looked at the
landscape of the 21st century in 2013 and 2016,
what did they deem fundamental? The modern list
includes computer science at the University of
Southampton. Right. Electronics and computer
engineering, which touches on the very foundations
of cybersecurity at Queen's University Belfast.
Notice how far we have traveled from 1540. We
are no longer solely focused on civil law and
ancient Greek. We are officially elevating the
architecture of the digital world. Yeah. Cybersecurity
is the modern equivalent of city walls. That's
a great way to think about it. And the list gets
even more specific to our modern anxieties. Meteorology
and climate science at the University of Reading.
Open education at the Open University. And at
Newcastle University, a Regis professor of aging.
This raises an important question. How rapidly
have our base survival needs changed as a species?
Drastic. In 1540, the fundamental medical need
was physic basic anatomy and a rudimentary understanding
of disease. Now, the 2016 list includes infectious
disease at Imperial College London, precision
medicine at Glasgow, and cancer research at the
University of London. Newcastle's chair in aging
is incredibly telling, too. It is. In the 1500s,
living to an old age was a statistical rarity.
Today, we have an aging global population, and
society recognizes that understanding how to
manage the biology and sociology of aging is
a fundamental, continuing, and significant need.
And the inclusion of meteorology in climate science
is equally profound. It represents an official,
monarch -endorsed recognition that understanding
the changing climate is now a fundamental requirement
for the continuation of society. Yeah. It is
the modern equivalent of needing to know how
to build a bridge or understand crop rotation.
Looking at the whole timeline side by side is
genuinely jarring. King James III in 1497 stating
the urgent need to formalize medicine. Queen
Elizabeth II in 2016 declaring the urgent need
for experts in climate change, cybersecurity
and the management of an aging population. It
is the entire story of humanity's progress written
in the job titles of a few dozen extremely smart
people. A Wikipedia list of academic titles essentially
serving as a living, breathing time capsule.
It really is. As we wrap up this deep dive, we've
traveled from the 15th century right up to the
modern day. We've seen how a title that allows
an academic to drop the word professor has evolved
from honoring scholars of Hebrew and ancient
law to elevating the people trying to cure cancer
and protect our digital infrastructure. And for
you, the listener, whether you are prepping for
a meeting, catching up on your field, or just
trying to satisfy your own curiosity. It is worth
remembering that the way you choose to filter
what is fundamental knowledge in your own life
is part of this grand human tradition. Absolutely.
We are all constantly updating our own internal
list of what is necessary to survive and thrive
in our current era. We curate our own fundamental
knowledge every single day. But before we go,
I want to leave you with one final lingering
thought to mull over. We analyzed that massive
explosion of new Regis chairs created between
2013 and 2016, the ones focusing heavily on climate
science, aging, cancer and computer engineering.
Right. Imagine a civilization looking back a
thousand years from now at that specific cluster
of titles. Based strictly on the subjects we
begged a monarch to elevate in those three years,
what will future historians assume about the
specific fears, challenges and aspirations that
kept our generation awake at night? It's a heavy
thought. It makes you wonder what the very next
newly minted Regis chair will be. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning
the world around you and keep seeking out those
aha moments.