Closer by degrees
Many a lasting relationship is forged during university days, and we want to hear how you met your partner or best friend.
Here is a range of memorable on-campus moments that led to lifetimes together. If you met your partner or best friend at Edinburgh and would like to share your story, email us.
The right chemistry
Mary MacLean (nee Forrester): MA (Ord) 1941
Alistair MacLean: BSc Chemistry 1939, PhD 1941
I studied an MA (Ord) degree with two years of chemistry included. I lived very near King’s Buildings and had enough leisure time to enjoy Edinburgh and its environs.
I attended the opening ball at the King’s Buildings Common Room, and also the last graduation ball before the war, at what to us were the most glamorous Assembly Rooms. There were lots of ‘hops’, even after the war started. It was the waltzes, foxtrot and some of the funny dances – the bumpsie daisy, Lambeth walk and so on.
We girls who were close friends were all short of money, but on Friday mornings we would indulge in a cup of coffee if we still had 3d after saving bus fares by walking.
Alistair was in the last year of his PhD and I was in the final year of my degree when we met at a hop at the King’s Buildings Common Room. Three months later we were engaged and we graduated on the same day in 1941.
We were married in 1943. After the war, and after a spell in Ghana (then the Gold Coast), we were so lucky to return to Edinburgh.
Two of our three children studied at Edinburgh: Donald took a BSc Engineering and Margaret studied MA Geography and then a year of sport management at Cramond. Two of our grandchildren also studied at Edinburgh.
Last year we celebrated 70 years of happy marriage with family and friends. Six months later Alistair slept peacefully away.
-Mary MacLean
A slow start
Margaret Lamont (nee Robb): MBChB 1955, MD 1991
Inglis Lamont: MBChB 1955
The steamer hooted and made me turn round in surprise. There was Margaret, and half way from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay we spoke to each other briefly for the first time.
That was in our third year. Thanks to shyness and ‘other interests’ it was not until late in our fifth year (of a six-year medical course) that I asked her to go out with me.
A happy start to married life was our time in Germany, my National Service posting. Indeed we have enjoyed all the seven places where work and retirement have taken us. Thanks to medicine more modern than we studied, life is still fun, and we are determined to reach our diamond wedding in 2017.
Our children all followed us to the University of Edinburgh (one doctor out of four). Sad to say, no sign that any grandchild will come north of the border to study.
-Inglis Lamont
Low-brow beginning
Vasiliki Papadopoulos: MSc Philosophy 2003
Keith Thomas Kacsuta: MSc Social Research 2003
Keith and I were masters students living in Churchill House in 2002/3. Our mutual friend, Graham Steel, introduced us one evening in December 2002.
The three of us spent the evening eating, chatting and listening to music. Given that we lived in the same building, I expected to see Keith soon afterwards but we only ran into each other months later. He asked me to join him and his friends to watch the most low-brow of movies at the time – 'Jackass'. I obliged and a month later we started dating.
Upon graduation we returned to our respective countries – mine Canada, his the USA – and we decided to keep in touch. We realised this was not conducive to being in a relationship, so Keith moved to Canada in 2004. We got married in 2007 in Santorini, Greece, and in 2012 had a beautiful baby boy, Andreas Kacsuta.
We can thank Edinburgh for our life together and its happiness.
-Vasiliki Papadopoulos