SCOTLAND'S first black professor and tireless campaigner for education on colonialism and slavery, Sir Geoff Palmer, has died at the age of 85.

Part of the Windrush generation, he came to London from Jamaica at the age of 14, before moving to Edinburgh in the 1960s to complete a PhD in grain science and technology, going on to teach at Heriot-Watt University after becoming Scotland’s first black professor in 1989.

It was the field of history, however, which brought him to wider public prominence, writing articles and books on Scotland’s role in colonialism and slavery, as well as campaigning for acknowledgement of that history on monuments and buildings in Edinburgh and beyond.

Leading the tributes, First Minister John Swinney called him “a pioneer and an outstanding intellectual” who had a “hugely positive impact on Scotland,” while Lothian MSP Foysol Choudhury called the professor a “courageous voice for justice and equality.”

Hailing Professor Palmer as a “trailblazer and inspiration within higher education and in wider society”, Heriot-Watt University principal Richard A Williams said: “His infectious enthusiasm and passion for education was impossible to ignore.”