Andrew Coventry

Prof Andrew Coventry FRSE (1762–1830) was a Scottish agriculturist. He was the first Professor of Agriculture in Great Britain.

Andrew Coventry, born in February 1762, was eldest son of Rev George Coventry, minister of Stitchell in Roxburghshire. Through his mother, Elizabeth Horn, he inherited the estate of Shanwell, near Kinross, and some other landed property in Perthshire. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and on 15 December 1782 elected a member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh. In September 1783 he graduated M.D. for a thesis De Scarlatina Cynanchica. It is not clear whether he ever practised as a physician; but he appears to have specialised in the sciences bearing upon agriculture.

On 7 July 1790 Sir William Pulteney took the first steps towards endowing a chair of agriculture at Edinburgh, and nominated Coventry as the first professor. Occasional lectures on the subject had earlier been delivered by other professors, e.g. by the professor of chemistry, Dr. William Cullen, at the instigation of Lord Kames. A much fuller course had also been given by John Walker, then professor of natural history, in 1788.

The new chair's foundation seems to have been regarded with a good deal of jealousy: the professor of natural history protested that he was not to be hindered thereby from teaching 'any branch of natural science,' to which the professor of botany objected as infringing his rights; Coventry, for his part, insisted that none but himself had the right to give 'a separate course of georgical lectures.' Moreover, the endowment and patronage of a university chair by a private individual was unprecedented at the time, and seems to have aroused opposition.

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