'Modern Carnegie' mining magnate gifts £1.3m to his Scots alma mater

A SCOTTISH-born Canadian mining magnate, hailed as a modern-day Carnegie, is to make the largest private donation ever received by a Scottish university to establish a new Chair in engineering.

Robert M Buchan, who was born in Aberdeen and grew up in Rosyth, founded Kinross Gold, a small gold mining company which grew into the third-largest gold producer in North America, after he graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

And yesterday, the leading philanthropist returned to the campus where he was a student to announce the donation of 1.3 million to establish a new Chair in Sustainable Energy Engineering.

It is the largest-ever donation by an individual and one of the largest donations Heriot-Watt has received.

The announcement coincided with the launch of the Whitlock Energy Collaboration Centre at Carnegie College in Fife, which Mr Buchan also gave 650,000 to establish. His donation to the Fife institution was the largest single private individual donation to a Scottish college since the time of Andrew Carnegie, the Scots-American steel magnate who was the college's founding benefactor.

Mr Buchan said: "I believe in giving forward rather than giving back. It may sound like a small difference, but it reflects a desire to focus on what is needed in the future. The Chair in Sustainable Energy Engineering will focus attention on research and study in an area which, it is my hope, will keep Scotland at the forefront of this rapidly evolving discipline."

Professor Steve Chapman, principal of Heriot-Watt University, praised Mr Buchan's gift. He said: "This is a wonderfully generous donation by one of our most successful alumni, which will be used to fund a key post in line with the university's strategy of appointing top level candidates to address key challenges facing the world today.

"Robert Buchan believes in giving something forward, and this is certainly a very generous gift to the university, and to Scotland and its future, as well as to the wider world of energy sustainability.

"We will make sure that it is used to the greatest possible benefit for research into the important field of sustainable engineering and for future students who wish to pursue it."