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Glasgow has unexpectedly won a further Pounds 1.5 million from three American benefactors. Publicity-shy William Lindsay from Las Vegas, who is not known to have any connection with either Glasgow or Scotland, has given $2.5 million to endow the United Kingdom's first chair in health policy and economic evaluation.

John Beaton, a Glasgow chemistry graduate, and his wife Nanette, who also studied in the city, found the university's website when surfing the net. It gave detailed directions for alumni intending to make gifts, and Dr and Mrs Beaton, who emigrated to the United States in 1956 and are now US citizens, have provided $100,000 for undergraduate studentships.

Dr Beaton said he had been able to go to university in 1948 only because grants had just been announced.

Mrs Beaton said: "We were part of what was then known as the 'brain drain'. We were well aware that we left the country that had paid for our education. We decided that our gratitude to the Scottish educational system would be best expressed by a gift supporting the undergraduate programme, which we almost missed in 1948."