- published: 31 Jul 2012
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Coordinates: 57°09′54″N 2°06′00″W / 57.165°N 2.100°W / 57.165; -2.100
The University of Aberdeen is a public research university in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is an ancient university founded in 1495 when William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, petitioned Pope Alexander VI on behalf of James IV, King of Scots to create King's College. This makes it Scotland's third-oldest university (after the University of St Andrews and the University of Glasgow) and fifth-oldest in the English-speaking world. The university as it is today was formed in 1860 by a merger between King's College (which had always referred to itself as the University of Aberdeen) and Marischal College, a second university founded in 1593 in Aberdeen city centre as a Protestant alternative to King's College. Today, the University of Aberdeen is consistently ranked among the top 200 universities in the world and is one of two universities in Aberdeen, the other being The Robert Gordon University.
Aberdeen (i/æbərˈdiːn/; Scots: Aiberdeen listen ; Scottish Gaelic: Obar Dheathain [ˈopər ˈʝɛhɪn]; Latin: Aberdonia) is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 37th most populous built-up area, with an official population estimate of 196,670 for the city of Aberdeen itself and 228,990 for the local authority area.
Nicknames include the Granite City, the Grey City and the Silver City with the Golden Sands. During the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries, Aberdeen's buildings incorporated locally quarried grey granite, which can sparkle like silver because of its high mica content. Since the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s, other nicknames have been the Oil Capital of Europe or the Energy Capital of Europe. The area around Aberdeen has been settled since at least 8,000 years ago, when prehistoric villages lay around the mouths of the rivers Dee and Don. The city has a long, sandy coastline and a marine climate.