The Nineteenth Century Awakening
James Braidwood (1800-1861): Pioneer of Modern Fire-Fighting
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...
Pioneers of the Pneumatic Tyre and the Combine Harvester
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...
Revd Thomas Bayes (c.1701-1761): Pioneer of Data Science
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...
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Formulator of Thermodynamics
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...
Thomas Young, the Polymath
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)....
Sir David Brewster: Pioneering Scientist
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...
James Clerk Maxwell: Scotland’s Greatest Scientist
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,...
Pioneer of Scotland’s Modern Nursing: Angélique Lucille Pringle
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,...
Elsie Inglis and her Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women
In 1865 Britain was astir with a great controversy: a medical man called Dr James Barry was found upon his death to be a woman called Margaret Anne Bulkley. Margaret had been so desperate to practice medicine that she went to extraordinary lengths to hide her...
Pioneer of Sanitation: Sir Henry Littlejohn
“Gardee loo!”came a shrill voice from one of the upper windows in a dark alleyway in Edinburgh’s Old Town. With little time given to step aside, the pedestrian sought to avoid the effluence hurled from above, and with an angry shout, he sought to clean his trousers of...
Pioneer of Kidney Transplants: Sir Michael Woodruff
Although American surgeons had had limited success in surgical kidney transplants in the 1950s, credit for the first successful kidney transplant in the UK goes to Michael Woodruff. It was in 1960 that he performed the first kidney transplant from a living donor in...
Pioneers of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
An example of the way in which Christianity was hugely significant in developing healthcare, can be seen by what happened with the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, one of Scotland’s leading hospitals. One of the students from Scotland who studied under the Christian,...