History of Scotland

Our ongoing history of Scotland that chronicles the events in Scotland over the past million years with a special focus on the last thousand as you might expect. We have also digitised a copy of Patrick Tytler's History of Scotland which is an eccentric but wonderfully written history of the the mediaeval years in Scotland. The project of chronicling Scotland's history is ongoing, as is the process of organising and structuring and linking the pages together.

Adam Smith Farrer Biography

Biography of Adam Smith by Farrer - full text version

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Adam Smith Philosopher

Adam Smith

Name : Smith
Born : 1723
Died : 1790
Category : Philosophers and Historians
Finest Moment : Publication of The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Yet another Scot from Fife, Adam Smith was an unquestioned genius. He was born in Kirkcaldy, five months after his father had died. Went to Glasgow University aged 14, for a diet of mathematics, physics and philosophy. He became Professor of Logic at this University in 1751, then Professor of Moral Philosophy the next year, a post he held for 12 years.

In 1764, he resigned in mid-session, refunding his tuition fees, despite protests from his students that he had already given more than enough value. He toured the Continent as a tutor to the Duke of Buccleuth, returning home to his mother in Kirkcaldy. There he remained for 10 years (he never married), comfortable with a life pension equivalent to a professional salary (he was a Fifer, remember!)

His ten years in Kirkcaldy saw the publication in 1776 of An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, required reading still for students of political economy and others. His other writings are equally impressive and his moral philosophy well worthy of long consideration; his prescription for national wealth combined individual free enterprise with cooperation, specialisation and the division of labour that went with it. He foresaw dangers in free enterprise and envisaged some degree of state control.

He moved to Edinburgh in 1788, as Commissioner of Customs, living with his mother in the Canongate. Latterly he asked his friends James Hutton and Joseph Black to burn many of his papers, leaving a selected list for posthumous publication as Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795). He died in Edinburgh, on 17 July 1790.

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King Alexander 1

Name : Alexander I
Born : 1077
Died : 1124
Category : Kings and Queens
Finest Moment : Succession to the throne in 1107

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King Alexander 2

Name : Alexander II
Born : 1198
Died : 1249
Category : Kings and Queens
Finest Moment : Keeping the peace with the English, 1217 onwards.

Born 24 August 1198 at Haddington, East Lothian, he was the only son of William I (The Lion) and Ermengarde de Beaumont. He succeeded his father in 1214, aged 16. He must have had the smarts, making the peace fairly quickly with the English in 1217, thereby renouncing his earlier claims to Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland. This deed he sealed by marrying Henry's sister, Princess Joan.

On his thorny Scottish side, he was a strong defender of the independence of the Scottish Church, founding several abbeys. In suppressing the assorted scrum of rebellious Scottish lords he could err on the firm side, such as when, about 1222, he had the hands and feet of 80 men cut off, as they had been present at the murder of one of his bishops.

After 21 years' of marriage, his wife Joan died childless. The next year he married Marie de Coucy, the daughter of a French nobleman. They had one son, who would later take the throne as Alexander III.

While out on an expedition to chase the Norwegians off the Hebrides, he fell ill. He died on the island of Kerrera, close to Oban, on 8 July 1249. He was buried at Melrose Abbey.

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Alexander Campbell Mackenzie Composer

Name : Mackenzie
Born : 1847
Died : 1935
Category : Music
Finest Moment : The Rose of Sharon, 1884.

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Alexander Fleming & Penicillin

Sir Alexander Fleming / Medical Pioneers

Name : Fleming
Born : 1881
Died : 1955
Category : Medical Pioneers
Finest Moment : Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1945, INvention and discovery of Penicillin

The discovery of the natural antibiotic penicillium notatum, to give its scientific name, stands out as a medical landmark as important as the introduction of two other life-savers anaesthesia and antiseptics. Its discovery was also as though taken straight out of a Hollywood classic script.

Fleming was brought up at Lochfield Farm, near Darvel, Ayrshire. He worked in London for five years as a shipping clerk before studying medicine, in which he quickly showed aptitude as a researcher. Good researchers are probably born, and not taught, and Fleming eventually spent all of his professional life at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington.

The dreadful scenes of the trenches and work in a World War I hospital led Fleming to look for means of keeping contaminated wounds clean. He was the first to use antityphoid vaccines in humans, and pioneered the use of salvarsan against syphilis. But it took a fortuitous current of air and a wandering spore of mould to start off the train of research which led to one of the biggest savers of life - Penicillin.

In the summer of 1928 a glass plate was waiting to be washed on Fleming's lab sink. The plate had been carrying a sample of septicaemia organism, which causes blood poisoning. But Fleming noticed that an area of the sample had been colonised and cleared, presumably by an airborne spore. He soon found that this spore had the ability to kill or inhibit a variety of nasties, including those which cause wound inflammations, pneumonia, meningitis, diptheria etc. A colleague in the same building, who specialised in moulds, also worked on penicillium in a different experiment, and he confirmed its identity. (A suspicious, science-trained mind might also suspect that the possibility of contamination through an open window or door might be higher because of this fact, but we digress.)

Fleming, carrying out further research, found that the derived substance under test, which he named penicillin, was both difficult to produce in large quantities and not very efficient in a clinical situation. He had other, important work to do, and was in particular disappointed with its efficacy regarding influenza, a huge killer immediately following the First World War, when it killed more than the war itself. He downgraded its importance in his mind, and it was left to other researchers, in particular Florey and Chain at Oxford, to pick up the research which finally demonstrated its usefulness.

Penicillin was soon under mass production in the U.S.A. Fleming, who received no financial reward for his discovery, was knighted in 1944, and deservedly, along with Florey and Chain, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. His remains are buried in St Paul's Cathedral. But for his spotting the incredible accident on the glass plate and pursuing it, millions of lives would not have been saved by this 'magic bullet' known as penicillin.

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