Phrenology, IQ tests and their far-right revival

Phrenology was long ago added to the junk heap of discredited theories.

- Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

psychology in 1906. It continues to fund annual fellowships at the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

Even in its heyday, phrenology faced criticism as unscientific, not least from some of Edinburgh's medical elite. But the university's race review found that some of its most vocal critics still believed in immutable biological differences in intelligence and temperament between populations.

These included Alexander Monro III, an anatomy professor at the university's medical school, and Robert Jameson, a regius professor of natural history. The former lectured "that the Negro skull, and consequently the brain, is smaller than that of the European", while the latter made use of a hierarchical diagram of brain size and intelligence by race in his lectures at the university.