Former principal Professor Louise Richardson returned to the University of St Andrews to be honoured by the ancient seat of learning.
Mrs Richardson was given an honorary degree, alongside graduants who studied under her tenure.
At the ceremony in the Younger Hall she was presented by Patrick Mathewson, president of the students’ association, in recognition of her “major contribution to insubordination, obstinance, and all that makes a St Andrean”.
Now vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Mrs Richardson left St Andrews at the end of last year after seven years at the helm.
She made history as the first female principal and vice chancellor at St Andrews and oversaw its 600th anniversary celebrations, raising its profile across the globe.
Despite her comparatively brief time at the university, Mr Mathewson said Mrs Richardson had had no less dramatic an impact than the university’s ‘second founder’ Sir James Irvine who restored student numbers and commissioned St Salvator’s Hall and Younger Hall.
Mr Mathewson said: “Her chorus was one of academic excellence, a time that saw St Andrews climb national and international league tables.
“With equal vigour and vision she devoted herself to a notion of education that extended beyond the classroom, with projects such as a new students’ association, sports centre and music centre.
“She took aim at some of the most intractable problems facing our society, fighting for gender equality and encouraging the university to lead in the stewardship of our planet through endeavours such as the Guardbridge biomass plant and Kenly wind farm.”
An international expert in terrorism, Irish-born Mrs Richardson was executive dean of Harvard’s Radcliffe institute before coming to Scotland to lead St Andrews in 2009.
Honorary degrees were also conferred on economist and intellectual historian Professor Emma Rothschild and Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, one of the most important scholars of ancient culture and ancient philosophy of the 20th and 21st Centuries.
