National Records of Scotland

Preserving the past, Recording the present, Informing the future

Hall of Fame A-Z

Hall of Fame A-Z

A

Robert Adam (1728-1792), architect

William Adam (1689-1748), builder and architect

William Alexander (c1567-1641), poet and politician

Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873-1943), surgeon and suffragette

Johnny Armstrong (died 1529), Border Reiver, in the entry on hairy thyme

Sir William Arrol (1839-1913), civil engineer

B

Dame Isobel Baillie (1895-1983), singer

Robert Baillie of Jerviswood (1634-1684), conspirator

John Logie Baird (1888-1946), television engineer

Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Prime Minister

Lady Eve Balfour (1898-1990), promoter of organic farming and co-founder of the Soil Association

James Ballantyne (1772-1833), printer and newspaper editor

John Ballantyne (1774-1821), publisher and literary agent

Charles Glover Barkla (1877-1944), physicist and Nobel laureate

J M Barrie (1860-1937), playwright and novelist

John George Bartholomew (1860-1920). geographer and cartographer

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), educator of the deaf and inventor of the telephone

Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842), physiologist and surgeon

Joseph Black (1728-1799), chemist and physician

William Blackwood (1776-1834), publisher and founder of 'Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine'

James Boswell (1740-1795), lawyer, diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson

Sir Thomas Bouch (1822-1880), civil engineer

Harry Bowers (1883-1912), polar explorer

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), natural philosopher and academic administrator

John Broadwood (1732-1812), harpsichord and piano manufacturer

Henry Brougham (1778-1868), Lord Chancellor

George Douglas Brown (1869-1902), writer

George Mackay Brown (1921-1996), poet and writer

John Brown (1826-1883), personal servant to Queen Victoria

Alexander Buchan (1829-1907), meteorologist

John Buchan (1875-1940), author, publisher and Governor-General of Canada

David Dunbar Buick (1854-1929), inventor and Motor Industry pioneer

Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), Bishop of Salisbury and historian

Robert Burns (1759-1796), poet

Sir William Burrell (1861-1958), art collector

Sir Matt Busby (1909-1994), football manager

C

Grace Cadell (1855-1918), physician and suffragist

Robert Cadell (1788-1849), bookseller and publisher

William Cadell (1708-1777), industrialist

Sir Hall Caine (1853-1931), writer

David Calderwood (1575-1650), Church of Scotland minister and historian

Archibald Campbell (1658-1703), nobleman and politician

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836-1908), Prime Minister

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), poet

Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805), Church of Scotland minister and memorialist

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), author, biographer and historian

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), manufacturer and philanthropist

William Carstairs (1649-1716), Church of Scotland minister and political adviser

James Chalmers (1782-1853), Post Office reformer

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), founder of the Free Church of Scotland

Robert Chambers (1802-1871), publisher and writer

William Chambers (1800-1883), publisher

Agatha Christie (1890-1976), writer

Jim Clark (1936-1968), world champion racing driver

Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676-1755), politician and antiquary

George Coats, Baron Glentanar (1849-1918), industrialist

Thomas Cochrane, tenth earl of Dundonald (1775-1860), Naval Officer

Alison Cockburn (1717-1794), writer and literary hostess

Henry Cockburn (1779-1854), author and judge

Patrick Colquhoun (1745-1820), provost of Glasgow, tobacco merchant, reformer and statistician in the entry on hazel

Robert Colquhoun (1914-1962), artist, in the entry on hazel

Archibald Constable (1774-1827), publisher

Archibald Scott Couper (1831-1892), chemist

Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), banker

James Craig (1739-1795), architect and designer of Edinburgh's New Town

William Creech (1745-1815), bookseller and magistrate

Samuel Rutherford Crockett (1859-1914), novelist

A J Cronin (1896-1981), novelist

William Cullen (1710-1790), chemist and physician

Stanley Cursiter (1887-1976), painter, museum director and cartographer

D

David Dale (1739-1806), industrialist and philanthropist

James Dalrymple (1619-1695), lawyer and politician

Sir John Dalrymple (1648-1707), politician and Lord Advocate

Henry Stewart, lord Darnley (1545/6-1567), second consort of Mary Queen of Scots

Randall Davidson (1848-1930), Archbishop of Canterbury

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), essayist

William Denny (1815-1854), shipbuilder and shipowner

Sir James Dewar (1842-1923), chemist and physicist

George Dick (1914-1997), pathologist and virologist

Catherine Dickens (1815-1879), wife of Charles Dickens

James Donaldson (1751-1830), newspaper editor and philanthropist

Archibald Douglas (1694-1761), landowner

David Douglas (1799-1834), plant collector

James Douglas (1662-1711), politician

Margaret Douglas (d 1775), noblewoman

Thomas Millie Dow (1848-1919), artist

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), writer

Flora Drummond (1878-1949), suffragette

Victoria Drummond (1894-1978), marine engineer

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649), poet and pamphleteer

Henry Duncan (1774-1846), founder of the first savings bank run on business principles

Henry Dundas (1742-1811), politician

John Boyd Dunlop (1840-1921), inventor and pioneer of the pneumatic rubber tyre

E  

Isabella Elder (1827-1905), champion of women's education

Ena, princess of Battenberg (1887-1969), granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Queen of Spain

Mary Erskine (1629-1707), businesswoman and philanthropist

Thomas Erskine (1732-1781), composer

F

William Farquhar (1774-1839). colonial administrator in Singapore

Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), philosopher and historian

Robert Fergusson (1750-1774), poet

Susan Ferrier (1782-1854), novelist

Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), artist and writer, in the entry on the Guelder rose

James Finlayson (1887-1953), actor

Andrew Fisher (1862-1928), Prime Minister of Australia

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), bacteriologist, discoverer of penicillin and Nobel laureate

Sir William Russell Flint (1880-1969), artist

Duncan Forbes of Culloden (1644-1704), genealogist and politician

George Forrest (1873-1932), plant collector

Robert Foulis (1707-1776) and Andrew Foulis (1712-1775), printers and book-sellers

Robert Foulis (1796-1866), inventor of the steam-operated fog alarm in the entry for the Robert and Andrew Foulis, printers and book-sellers

Simon Fraser (1773-1852), editor of traditional music and composer

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941), social anthropologist and classical scholar

Edmund Fresson (1891-1963), airline executive

G

Robert Garioch (1909-1981), poet and translator

Jenny Geddes (c 1600-c 1660), market trader in the entry on the lesser periwinkle

Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), social evolutionist and city planner

Sir Archibald Geikie (1835-1924), geologist and historian

James Geikie (1839-1915), geologist

Lewis Grassic Gibbon - pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935), writer

James Gilchrist (1832-1894), violin maker

Thomas Blake Glover (1838-1911), merchant

Harry Goodsir (1819-c 1847-48), surgeon and naturalist

Niel Gow (1727-1807), music-seller and composer

James Gillespie Graham (1776-1855), architect

James Grahame (1790-1842), historian

Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932), writer and Secretary of the Bank of England

Anne Grant (1755-1838), author

Sir Samuel Greig (1735-1788), Father of the Russian Navy

Sir Nigel Gresley (1876-1941), railway engineer

Jimmie Guthrie (1897-1937), racing motorcyclist

Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873), Free Church of Scotland minister and philanthropist

H

Jane Haining (1897-1944), missionary

Basil Hall (1788-1844), naval officer and author

John Hamilton (1656-1708), politician

Thomas Hamilton (1563-1637), lawyer and politician

William Hamilton (1704-1754), poet and Jacobite army officer

James Hannay (died 1661), Dean of St Giles in Edinburgh, in the entry on the lesser periwinkle

Keir Hardie (1856-1915), founder of the Labour Party

Adam Hepburn (d 1513), Master of the Royal Stables

Andrew Heriot (died c1531), laird

George Heriot (1563-1624), jeweller and philanthropist

David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), painter and photographer

Johnny Hill (1905-1929), world boxing champion

James Hogg (1770-1835), poet and novelist

Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903-1995), Prime Minister

Francis Horner (1778-1817), politician

David Hume (1711-1796), philosopher and historian

Joseph Hume (1777-1855), radical and politician

John Hunter (1728-1793), surgeon and anatomist

William Hunter (1718-1783), physician and anatomist

James Hutton (1726-1797), geologist

I

Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), physician, surgeon and suffragette

J

David "Monterey" Jack (1822-1909), businessman

Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), writer and judge

Sophia Jex-Blake (1840-1912), physician and campaigner for women’s rights

Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), sinologist and tutor to the last Emperor of China

Samuel Johnston (1733-1816), American lawyer and statesman

Louisa Jordan (1878-1915), nurse

K

John Kay (1742–1826), portrait etcher and miniature painter

Lord Kelvin see William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907), mathematician and physicist

John Knox (d 1572), religious reformer

L

Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864-1945), Archbishop of Canterbury

Sir Harry Lauder (1870-1950, music hall entertainer

Sir John Lauder (1646-1742), judge and political commentator

Bonar Law (1858-1923), Prime Minister

Jennie Lee (1904-1988), politician

David Leslie (1601-1682), army officer

George Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), landowner

James Lind (1716-1794), naval surgeon and physician

James Bowman Lindsay (1799-1862), experimenter with electricity and writer on theology

Joseph Lister (1827-1912), surgeon and founder of a system of antiseptic surgery

David Livingstone (1813-1873), explorer and missionary

George Lockhart of Carnwath (1681-1731), Jacobite politician and memoirist

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), writer and literary editor

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), geologist

Benny Lynch (1913-1946), world boxing champion

John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836), builder and administrator of roads

Zachary MacAulay (1768-1838), slavery abolitionist

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996), poet

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), poet and writer

George MacDonald (1824-1905), poet and novelist

Sir Hector MacDonald (1853-1903), Army officer

Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1815-1891), first Prime Minister of Canada

Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Prime Minister

Alexander MacDonell (1725-1761), soldier and Jacobite

William MacGillivray (1796-1852), ornithologist and natural historian

Rob Roy MacGregor (1671-1734), outlaw and folk hero

Charles Macintosh (1766-1843), chemist and inventor of waterproof fabric

Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820), explorer

Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892), Prime Minister of Canada

George Mackenzie (d 1651), chief of Clan Mackenzie

Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), writer

Osgood Mackenzie (1842-1922), founder of the garden at Inverewe, in the entry on ling (white heather)

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), architect, decorative artist and watercolour painter

Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746), mathematician and natural philosopher

Agnes Maclehose (1758-1841), letter-writer and poet

Anna Macleod (1917-2004), professor of brewing and distilling

John James Rickard Macleod (1876-1935), physiologist and biochemist, Nobel laureate

Kirkpatrick McMillan (1812-1878), inventor of the pedal cycle

Lachlan Macquarie (1761-1824), army officer and colonial governor

Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722-1799), judge

John Maitland (1616-1682), politician

Alexander Mann (1853-1908), artist 

Martin Martin (died 1719), author of 'A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland' (1703) in the entries on ling (white heather) and wild flag iris

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587)

Francis Masson (1741-1805), botanist, in the entry on the African blue lily

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), physicist

Horatio McCulloch (1805-1867), landscape painter

William Topaz McGonagall (c 1825–1902), poet and actor

Andrew Meikle (1719-1811), millwright and inventor of the threshing machine

John Middleton (1619-1674), army officer

Hugh Miller (1802-1856), geologist, evangelical journalist and writer

James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935), writer

Dr James Moffatt (1870-1944), Bible scholar

Alexander Monro (1697-1767), founder of the University of Edinburgh's Medical School

Sir John Moore (1761-1809), Army officer

Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866), pioneer of psychiatric medicine

Old Tom Morris (1821-1908), golfer

Young Tom Morris (1851-1875), Scottish golf champion

Agnes Mowbray (d 1595), wife of Robert Crichton of Eliok, Lord Advocate

John Muir (1838-1914), conservationist

Thomas Muir (1765-1798), political reformer

William Murdoch (1754-1839), engineer and discoverer of coal gas

Alexander Murray (1775-1813), linguist

Flora Murray MD (1869-1923), physician and suffragette

John Murray (1737-1793), bookseller and publisher

Sir John Murray (1841-1914), marine scientist and oceanographer

Lady Caroline Nairne (1766-1845), songwiter

Thomas Nelson (1780-1861), publisher and printer

James Newlands (1813-1871), architect and civil engineer

Sir John Boyd Orr (1880-1971), nutritional physiologist and Nobel laureate

Robert Owen (1771-1858), philanthropist

P

Mungo Park (1771-1806), explorer in Africa

Sir Robert William Philip (1857-1939), physician and founder of tuberculosis dispensaries

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), private detective

Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), physician

John Playfair (1748-1819), mathematician and geologist

William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), architect

Q

R

John Rae (1813-1893), Arctic explorer

Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), portrait painter

Allan Ramsay (1684-1758), poet

Allan Ramsay of Kinkell (1713-1784), portrait painter

Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916), physical chemist and Nobel laureate

Sir George Houstoun Reid (1845-1918), Prime Minister of Australia

Thomas Reid (1710-1796), natural and moral philosopher

Lord John Reith (1889-1971), first Director-General of the BBC

John Rennie (1761-1821), engineer

David Riccio (1533-1566), musician and courtier

William Robertson (1721-1793), historian and minister of the Church of Scotland

Dr John Rogerson (1741-1823), physician

Sir John Ross (1777-1851), naval officer and Arctic explorer

Marion Ross (1903-1994), physicist

John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic and social critic

Lord John Russell (1792-1878), Prime Minister

Daniel Rutherford (1749-1819), physicist and chemist

Samuel Rutherford (c 1600-1661), Church of Scotland minister and political theorist

S

Saint Andrew

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), poet and novelist

Patrick Sellar (1780-1851), sheep farmer and agent of the Highland Clearances

Bill Shankly (1913-1981), football manager

James Sharp (1618-1679), Archbishop of St Andrews

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), poet

Nan Shepherd (1893–1981), author and college teacher

Alastair Sim (1900-1976), actor and director

Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870), physician and obstetrician

James Scott Skinner (1843-1927), traditional fiddler, in the entry on the Scotch thistle

Mary Slessor (1848-1915), missionary

John Slezer (d 1717), army officer and topographical draughtsman

Adam Smith (1723-1790), moral philosopher and political economist

Nicol Smith (1873-1905), footballer

Sir William Alexander Smith (1854-1914), founder of the Boys' Brigade

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), writer

Mary Somerville (1780-1872), science writer and mathematics expositor

Dr William Clark Souter (1880-1959), ophthalmic surgeon

Dame Muriel Spark (1918-2006), poet and novelist

Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976), architect

John Spottiswoode (1565-1639), Archbishop of St Andrews and historian

Group Captain James Stagg (1900-1975), meteorologist

Jock Stein (1922-1985), football manager

Flora Clift Stevenson (1839-1905), philanthropist and educationalist

Robert Stevenson (1772-1850), civil engineer

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), writer

Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), philosopher

Marie Stopes (1880-1958), scientist and advocate of birth control

Lord Strathcona (1820-1914), businessman and politician in Canada

John Stuart, third earl of Bute (1713-1792), Prime Minister

Elizabeth Sutherland (1765-1839), landowner

Robert Garioch Sutherland see Robert Garioch (1909-1981), poet and translator

Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson (1847-1927), composer

T

Archibald Campbell Tait (1811-1882), Archbishop of Canterbury

Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Tedder (1890-1967), Air Force officer

Thomas Telford (1757-1834), civil engineer

Charles Tennant (1768-1838), chemical manufacturer

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), novelist

Alexander 'Greek' Thomson (1817-1875), architect

Andrew Mitchell Thomson (1778-1831), Church of Scotland minister and journalist

Joseph Thomson (1858-1895) explorer in Africa

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907), mathematician and physician

Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948), zoologist and classical scholar, in the entry on the grape hyacinth

Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936), artist

James Tytler (1745-1804), editor second edition of 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'

U

V

W

Johnnie Walker (1805-1857), whisky blender

Dudley D Watkins (1907-1969), comic artist

Andrew Watson (1856-1921), footballer and marine engineer

Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973), developer of radar

James Watt (1736-1819), engineer

Sir David Webster (1903-1971), theatre and opera house administrator

Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841), painter of genre historical subjects and portraits

Peter Williamson (1730-1799), publisher and adventurer

Alexander Wilson (1714-1786), astronomer and type founder

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), ornithologist and poet

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869-1959), physicist and Nobel laureate

George Washington Wilson (1823-1893), miniature painter and photographer

James Wilson (1742-1798), signatory to the American Declaration of Independence

John Witherspoon (1723-1794), signatory to the American Declaration of Independence

Robert Wodrow (1679-1734), ecclesiastical historian

X

Y

James Young (1811-1883), chemist and philanthropist

Z