It is hard for us to imagine the poverty of many in the Victorian period. Today’s Royal Mile in Edinburgh is the busiest street in Scotland. Multitudes come to see this old and iconic place. Running parallel to this famous street is the Grassmarket, with the Cowgate...
We have long grown used to our national education in Scotland and taken it for granted, as if it has always been there. One day I took to the streets to ask British students at the University of Edinburgh from where they thought our education system had come. Not one...
As the shrill siren echoed along the street, everyone knew they had to clear a path for the fire engine. It bustled and roared along, red and furious, to fight the fire in a hotel. Its crew, qualified and equipped, were bursting with adrenalin, knowing that their...
Robert William Thomson (1822-1873): Inventor of the Pneumatic Tyre Every so often there is a mad scramble for the credit to be given to an inventor of something. Here in Scotland, we tend to think of John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn in Ayrshire as the inventor of the...
In 2018 the £45 million Bayes Centre building was opened by HRH The Princess Royal. The University of Edinburgh is proud of its new addition, bringing into this building a collaboration of scientists, business people and the public, to pioneer advances in data science...
Having been born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, William Thomson (1824-1907) went on to study at the University of Glasgow, and then ended up being Professor of Physics at the same university from 1846, where he remained for fifty-three years. His great contribution to...
As a teenager I remember using the double-slit experiment to see how light behaves in physics; it is something that is staple diet in the science department of our education system. The pioneer of the double-slit experiment was an Englishman, Thomas Young (1773-1829)....
David Brewster (1781-1868) went to the University of Edinburgh from Jedburgh, at the age of twelve. In 1813 he presented his paper to the Royal Society on various scientific instruments, and on the evidence of 200 substances that can refract, or disperse light. As a...
In a nation famous for scientific inventions and advancements, one person is voted regularly as Scotland’s greatest scientist ever: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Frequently three people are placed on the mantle-place of world scientific achievement: Isaac Newton,...
In 1872, Joseph Lister was becoming frustrated as he worked as the Professor of Clinical Surgery in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This Christian had introduced antiseptics and hygiene in healthcare, and by now his methods were being introduced in many hospitals,...