Hundreds of people have paid tribute to Scotland's first black professor and remembered his "extraordinary life" at a memorial service in Edinburgh.

Sir Geoff Palmer, former chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, died in June aged 85. The memorial celebration, hosted jointly by the university and the City of Edinburgh Council, took place at St Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile on Friday.

Born in Jamaica in 1940, Sir Geoff moved to London aged 14 as part of the Windrush generation and then to Edinburgh in the 1960s, where he completed a PhD in grain science and technology. In 1989 he became Scotland's first black professor as he began a teaching role at Heriot-Watt which continued until his retirement in 2005, and he returned to become chancellor in 2021.

Speaking after the service

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