Professor Sir Iain Torrance KCVO Kt FRSE
Professor Torrance was born in Aberdeen and educated at the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Oxford.
After ministry in Northmavine Parish in the Shetland Islands, he taught at Queen’s College, Birmingham, and then Birmingham University, before returning to Aberdeen in 1993. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Divinity before being elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2003.
He was President of Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey from 2004 to the end of 2012. While there, he led the institution through the financial downturn of 2008 and built their new library.
Appointed a Chaplain to HM The Queen in 2001, in 2013 he was appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal in Scotland and in 2014 Dean of the Order of the Thistle. He retired from both Deanships in July 2019.
He has been granted honorary degrees by the Universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Debrecen Reformed Theological University in Hungary and King University, Tennessee. He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007 and became a Fellow (FRSE) on his return to Scotland at the beginning of 2013.
He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours List 2018 for services to Higher Education and Theology, and a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) for his service to The Queen in July 2019.