regius professor

See also: Regius Professor and Regius professor

English

Alternative forms

• Regius Professor
• Regius professor

Noun

regius professor (plural regius professors)

1. A professor who holds a position created by or filled by a royal patron.
   • 1841, George Peacock, Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, London: John W. Parker. Cambridge: J. and J. J. Deighton, page 34:

     All doctors, in whatever faculty, were called likewise professores, and possessed and equal capacity to claim and occupy the chair (cathedra) on solemn inceptions and other occasions; this privilege was first restricted, by the Elizabethan statutes, to the three regii professores.

   • 1874, Report: Ordered by the House of Assembly to be Printed, page 16:

     In Oxford there are some forty professors, of whom seven or eight are regius professors appointed by the Crown, and paid by revenues derived from the Crown.

   • 1989, Crosbie Smith, M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, →ISBN, page 27:

     For very good reasons, the College professors were keen to exclude the new regius professors - who often received a mere £50 per year from the Crown - from a share in the College revenue, and so men like the chemist Thomas Thomson and the engineer Lewis Gordon (unlike the five older regius professors of astronomy, church history, civil law, medicine, and anatomy) were without administrative and academic power in the Glasgow institution.

   • 2002, Michael Bliss, William Osler: A Life in Medicine, →ISBN, page 310:

     Sir Henry Acland, regius professor from 1857 to 1895, fought a series of good and largely successful fights to develop biological sciences at the university, overcoming the objections of anti-Darwinians, antivivisectionists, and others committed to tranquil inertia.

Usage notes

When used as part of a title, this term is always given in all uppercase (e.g. "Rev. Dr. Hampden, "Regius Professor of Divinity"). When used generically to refer to one who holds this type of professorship, the term is most often given in lower case, but some authors use all uppercase in both situations.