Professor Robin James Adam spent almost 40 years at St Andrews University, joining in 1948 at the age of 24 as the sole lecturer in medieval history.

During his four decades at Scotland's oldest university, he guided and supported the development of his subject in a separate department with its uncommon offering of a Single Honours degree. It was regarded as one of the success stories of the 60s and 70s, with the number of teachers rising to 13 and the size of the final honours class to more than 50. He retired in the late 1980s from the university.

Born in Dumfriesshire, he moved at an early age to Lochinver in West Sutherland where he enjoyed a childhood which introduced him both to his life-long passion for the sport of fishing and, at his village school, to Latin.

He later attended Edinburgh Academy and won an open scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, to study medieval history.

Exempt from military service as a consequence of health problems, he graduated BA with first class honours in the School of Modern History in 1945 at the same time as Lionel Butler, who was in 1955 to follow him to St Andrews as professor in the department. Temporary teaching posts at Southampton and Glasgow followed before his move to St Andrews as lecturer in 1948.

He was appointed senior lecturer in 1956 and to a personal chair in social history in October, 1975.

Regarded by his colleagues at St Andrews as the quintessential university teacher, always with a sharp eye for encouraging the talented and correcting the indolent, Professor Adam enjoyed the variety of teaching opportunities offered by seminars and tutorials.

His interest in mediaeval France led him to translate - with L F

Butler - Robert Fawteir's seminal interpretative work, Les Capetiens et la France in 1960. He also published numerous historical articles and reviews.

In 1965 he produced a study of the Norman Conquest of 1066 as A Conquest of England. He also wrote two books for the Scottish History Society on John Home's Survey of Assynt in 1960 and Papers of Sutherland Estate Management 1802-1816 (two volumes 1972).

Professor Adam was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls, Oxford, in 1966-67 and a Fellow of the Royal Scottish Historical Society. He conducted considerable research on their behalf over the years.

A life-long member of the Conservative Party, he served it in East Fife and his work was honoured in 1983 when he was awarded the OBE for public and political service.

Professor Adam was a past chairman of the North East Fife Conservative Association, former honorary president of the East Fife Conservative Association, and past chairman of the Mid-Scotland and Fife Euro Constituency Association. He also served the St Andrews Film Society as an office-bearer for almost 20 years.

During the 1960s he wrote four light novels under the pseudonym Paul MacTyre and he undertook frequent visits to France where he had a cottage in the Dordogne and where he enjoyed photographing Romanesque art.

Twice married, Professor Adam's first wife, Mary, was killed in a car crash 25 years ago, while his second wife, Anne, died last year. Professor Adam, who lived in St Andrews, is survived by a grown-up family of three, and by six stepchildren.