List of Famous people born in Scotland, United Kingdom
Robert William Thomson
Robert William Thomson PRSSA FRSE (1822–1873), from Stonehaven, Scotland, was the inventor of the fountain pen and original inventor of the pneumatic tyre.
Duns Scotus
John Duns, commonly called Duns Scotus, was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the three most important philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. Scotus has had considerable influence on both Catholic and secular thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are the "univocity of being", that existence is the most abstract concept we have, applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction, a way of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing; and the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God, and argued for the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
John McKenzie
John Archie MacKenzie was a Scottish footballer who spent most of his career with Partick Thistle, where he was known as the "Firhill Flyer".
John Cairncross
John Cairncross was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was alleged to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. He is also notable as a translator, literary scholar and writer of non-fiction.
Ian Steel
John "Ian" Steel was a Scottish racing cyclist who in 1952 won the Peace Race, a central European race between Warsaw, Berlin and Prague. He was the only Briton, and the only rider from the English-speaking world to win it, as well as the first Briton to win any major race. He also won the Tour of Britain as a semi-professional and was at one stage second in the 1952 Tour of Mexico before crashing.
James Donald
James Donald was a Scottish actor. Tall and thin, he specialised in playing authority figures.
Lord Francis Douglas
Lord Francis William Bouverie Douglas was a novice British mountaineer. After sharing in the first ascent of the Matterhorn, he died in a fall on the way down from the summit.
Jimmy Quinn
James Quinn was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic for 15 years, becoming one of the club's leading goalscorers of all time. He also represented Scotland.
John Law
John Law was a Scottish economist who distinguished money, a means of exchange, from national wealth dependent on trade. He served as Controller General of Finances under the Duke of Orleans, who was regent for the juvenile Louis XV of France. In 1716, Law set up a private Banque Générale in France. A year later it was nationalised at his request and renamed as Banque Royale. The private bank had been funded mainly by John Law and Louis XV; three-quarters of its capital consisted of government bills and government-accepted notes, effectively making it the nation's first central bank. Backed only partially by silver, it was a fractional reserve bank. Law also set up and directed the Mississippi Company, funded by the Banque Royale. Its chaotic collapse has been compared to the 17th-century tulip mania in Holland. The Mississippi bubble coincided with the South Sea bubble in England, which allegedly took ideas from it. Law as a gambler would win card games by mentally calculating odds. He originated ideas such as the scarcity theory of value and the real bills doctrine. He held that money creation stimulated an economy, paper money was preferable to metal, and dividend-paying shares a superior form of money. The term "millionaire" was coined for beneficiaries of Law's scheme.
Arthur St. Clair
Arthur St. Clair was a Scottish-American soldier and politician. Born in Thurso, Scotland, he served in the British Army during the French and Indian War before settling in Pennsylvania, where he held local office. During the American Revolutionary War, he rose to the rank of major general in the Continental Army, but lost his command after a controversial retreat from Fort Ticonderoga.