On 4 August 2009 the RSC commemorated Professor Joseph Black for his contribution to chemistry by the presentation of two landmark plaques at the 42nd IUPAC congress held at the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre (SECC). During the landmark ceremony, plaques were presented to distinguished representatives of both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities; Professor Chick Wilson and Professor Lesley Yellowlees respectively. The handing over of the plaques, which was carried out by RSC President Professor Dave Garner, was proceeded by a short talk by Dr Robert Anderson on the life's work and achievements of Professor Joseph Black. These include his fundamental work on latent and specific heats and his discovery of carbon dioxide. 

As a chemist he was a major international figure in his field during eighteenth century Scotland. Scholars and students travelled from far and wide to attend his lecture courses, and many of his pupils were later involved in the establishment of medical and scientific institutions.

Joseph Black was born in 1728 in Bordeaux, where his Ulster father was a merchant. He was sent to school in Belfast and then, in 1744, he went to the University of Glasgow. For the first four years, he took the general arts course but then in 1748 his father wrote telling him he should study for a profession. Black chose medicine, already a well-established area of study at the University. The faculty had been strengthened in 1747 by William Cullen's appointment to a lectureship in chemistry, and Black took full advantage of the laboratory facilities offered to students by his teacher, a most unusual arrangement for the time. In 1752 he decided to move to Edinburgh to complete his degree and to write his dissertation, a remarkable piece of work in which he characterised the alkalinity of basic magnesium carbonate. By 1755 he had shown that carbon dioxide ('fixed air') was chemically distinct from atmospheric air.

Black was appointed to the Glasgow chemistry lectureship when Cullen transferred to Edinburgh in 1756. For the next decade, Black immersed himself in teaching and research. He reorganised his laboratory, developed a concept latent heat alongside (but not with) James Watt, and participated fully in the social and academic life of the city. The Old College was not located where it is today: it was in the High Street, a site it occupied until 1870 when the new University was opened and the mediaeval buildings demolished to facilitate a railway goods yard.

In 1766 Black moved to Edinburgh, never to live in Glasgow again. The nature of his research changed: he conducted many chemical experiments for the aristocracy and landed gentry who wanted to develop industrial enterprises. Teaching, however, remained his main concern. By the time of his death in 1799, the nature of chemistry, and its applicability, had changed out of all recognition.