John Muir / Other
- Name : Muir
- Born : 1838
- Died : 1914
- Category : Other
- Finest Moment : Yosemite declared a National Park, 1890
A Pioneering Conservationist, and revered throughout America as the 'Father of the National Parks', John Muir was born in Dunbar, on 21 April 1838. At the age of 11 he emigrated with his family to Wisconsin, where his father started farming.
He started studying the natural history of the Yosemite Valley in 1868, making many original points about its geology. Meanwhile, he became increasingly aware of the desperate need to preserve such glorious areas for future generations.
In a series of active campaigns, he secured Congressional approval for its declaration as a National Park in 1890. His demonstration of its beauties to President Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt were beneficial in gaining support.
Ironically, there as yet no National Parks in Scotland, though there are ongoing discussions as to how they can be best implemented. In the interim, charitable organisations such as the John Muir Trust have been instrumental in raising funds to purchase wild land in Knoydart, Skye, and just recently Ben Nevis, so as to help preserve these areas.
He died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve, 1914, without ever renouncing or forgetting his Scottish origins.
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John Napier / Engineers
- Name : Napier
- Born : 1550
- Died : 1617
- Category : Engineer & Mathematician
- Finest Moment : Discovery of logarithms
A Renaissance Scot, Napier was born in Edinburgh, or possibly Balfron. He entered St Andrews University aged 13, becoming the 8th Laird of Merchiston when he was 18. He probably travelled abroad for some while, before returning to Merchiston Castle where he remained for the rest of his life. He married twice.
He was strongly anti-Catholic, and was a passionate and committed Protestant. On several occasions he was associated with the general assembly of the Scottish Church, trying to persuade King James VI of Scotland to deal with the Roman Catholics. He wrote the Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John. While of interest to students of theology and Scottish ecclesiastical history, Napier is far better remembered now for his discovery of logarithms. In 1614 he published Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms). His second part, the Construction of Logarithms, was published two years after his death.
Basically, logarithms made the computation of large numbers much easier. Using them is based on using printed tables. They were almost, in effect, paper computers for numbers, long before any other method of calculation was available. Napier beat a Swiss mathematician to this, as Joost Burgi was also working independently on logarithms, from 1603-11, publishing his findings in 1620. Napier had started working on them about 1594, and published in 1614.
Napier also used the decimal point throughout his second paper, as a means of separating the fractional part of a number from the integral part. This was a great improvement on an earlier method. As if this were not enough, in 1617 he published a description of multiplying and dividing numbers using small rods, known as Napier's Bones. They were the precursor to the slide rule, and there is no telling just how far Napier could have gone with better technology.
As a sideshow, he invented various secret instruments of war (does the name Leonardo da Vinci creep into your consciousness at this point'). One of these was a small chariot allowing shot to be fired through small apertures, a sort of armoured, mobile fire-base.
He died at Merchiston Castle, on 4 April 1617, having blazed enough new trails through the mathematical jungle for a whole army of later generations to follow.
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John Norman Collie / Mountaineers
- Name : Collie
- Born : 1859
- Died : 1942
- Category : Mountaineers
- Finest Moment : Numerous peaks and routes. In Scotland the 1st ascent, and 1st winter ascent, of Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis (1894); Thearlaich-Dubh Gap, Skye (1891); Sgurr Coir'an Lochain, Skye (1896); The Cioch (1906). In the higher ranges the Dent du Requin, Aiguille du Plan (1893); Mt. Athabasca, Canada (1898)
Norman Collie was born on September 10, 1859, at Alderley Edge, just south of Manchester. He was the second of four sons. He has a fair claim to be Scots, as his grandfather, George Collie, was tenant of the farm of Wantonwells at Insch, Aberdeenshire. His father John lived for several years at Glassel on Deeside, where from a small shooting estate he could enjoy fishing and shooting. Norman Collie was six at this time and even in his 80s he recalled the magic of good days out on the foothills of the Grampians around Banchory. John Senior had married Selina Winkworth and here there was a link to climbing, as one of Collie's uncles, Stephen Winkworth, had joined the Alpine Club in 1861.
The family moved south in 1870, to take up residence in Clifton, near Bristol. The excitement of wandering over the Scottish landscape was exchanged for the palpable danger of the rocks in the Clifton Gorge. Schooling was initially at Windlesham in Surrey, then in 1873 the leading public school Charterhouse. The family money had been made in the cotton trade but in 1875 the American Civil War resulted in their financial ruin. Sherman's army torched a vast amount of cotton which the Collie's firm was about to load on to their blockade busting ships and despite a shady insurance scam by Alexander Collie, one of John Senior's brothers, the company went bust. (As an interesting aside, Alexander's wife Flora MacNeill was a descendant of Flora Macdonald; she who helped Prince Charles escape from Skye.)
Collie had to leave Charterhouse, transferring to Clifton College. His uncle Stephen paid him an annual allowance while he was a student and with a small inheritance belonging to Selina the family was able to escape poverty. At Clifton, Collie found he was completely unsuited for the classics; only when he attended University College in Bristol was his true vocation for chemistry discovered.
He rapidly developed the two main interests in his life; a long and distinguished career as a scientist and an equally long and distinguished life as a mountaineer. As a scientist he began as a student under Professor Letts in Bristol, before moving to study at Wurzburg University in Germany, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1884. After that he spent two years as a science lecturer at Cheltenham Ladies' College, which he disliked, before moving to London in 1887 as Demonstrator in the Chemical Laboratories in University College, London.
In 1886, aged 27, he was on the Isle of Skye, scrambling in Coire a' Bhasteir. The fishing had been poor. He watched as two climbers made an ascent of one of the pinnacles on Sgurr nan Gillean. A few days later, armed with directions from the Skye guide John Mackenzie and accompanied by his brother Henry, he climbed Am Basteir. It was the beginning of his life long love of the Cuillin. Mackenzie was then the ghillie at Sligachan Inn and was some three years older than Collie. It was also the beginning of a famous friendship - more than a partnership - which lasted until Mackenzie's death in 1933.
But whereas Mackenzie never climbed outside the Cuillin, Collie became renowned as a climber and explorer in many mountainous areas of the world. He climbed in the Alps, the Himalayas, the Lofotens and the Canadian Rockies, where he made many first ascents. During six expeditions between 1897-1911, he recorded 21 first ascents and named at least 30 peaks.
Back in Skye, Collie had climbed all the main peaks by 1888. On September 12, 1896, he made the first ascent of Sgurr Coir'an Lochain, perhaps the last peak to be climbed in Britain. With him were Willie Naismith, E.B. Howell, an English climber and of course John Mackenzie. By 1890 Collie and Mackenzie were systematically exploring the Cuillin. The following year saw the first ascent of the Thearlaich-Dubh Gap, a crucial obstacle on the Cuillin Ridge. In the same year, 1891, he joined the SMC. By then he was an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University College London and had a house at 16 Campden Grove, Kensington.
In 1892 Collie began his climbing in the higher ranges, with his first visit to the Alps. He was climbing with the controversial A.F. Mummery. Controversial because his promotion of guideless climbing antagonised the chronic conservatism of the Alpine Club. Along with Hastings and Pasteur, the foursome made the initial traverse of the Aiguille de Grepon, including the famous "Mummery's Crack". The following year, this Alpine season, along with Collie's impressive British climbing record, allowed him membership of the Alpine Club.
In 1893 he hit the Alps again, with Slingsby, Hastings and Mummery. They made the first ascent of the Dent du Requin, the Petit Dru and the Matterhorn by the Italian Ridge. They also made the first ascent of the west face of the Aiguille du Plan, a 19-hour expedition.
By March 1894, when he joined the SMC Easter Meet at Inveroran, he was a seasoned Alpinist. He was accompanied by two guests from the Lake District in England; Godfrey Solly and Joseph Collier. After making several first ascent in Glencoe, the trio moved on to Fort William, where Ben Nevis was in splendid winter condition. On Friday, March 30, they pointed their ice axes at Tower Ridge. They were almost certainly unaware of the descent 18 months earlier by the Hopkinson family, though they soon spotted nail marks left on the rocks of the ridge by the Hopkinson boots.
The trio were successful, climbing Tower Ridge in five hours and visiting the Observatory on the summit. Collie was unstinting in his praise for the route and thought that it "resembled the Italian side of the Matterhorn and was the best climb he had ever had in Scotland". He liked it so much in fact, that he climbed it again the very next day, taking along his regular Alpine partner Geoffrey Hastings. Late that summer, Collie, Hastings and Mummery made the first guideless ascent of Mont Blanc by the Brenva Glacier. The next year, 1895, Collie was on Nanga Parbat with Mummery, when the latter disappeared trying to cross a pass.
Collie never returned to the Himalaya, and went on to explore the Canadian Rockies to great effect. But during this period, on Skye, he had spotted, on the great Sron na Ciche, on a late afternoon summer in 1899, an unsuspected shadow on the face, obviously cast by some large pinnacle of rock. He took a photograph as a record and determined to investigate it at some later date. The shadow was that of The Cioch and he waited until 1906 to climb it with his friend John Mackenzie.
By the time he returned from the 1911 Canadian expedition, he was in his early 50s. The pressure of scientific work was increasing. He had succeeded Sir William Ramsay in 1902 as the Professor of Organic Chemistry and in 1913 as Director of the chemical laboratories. It was effectively the end of his mountain expeditions. But he had discoveries still to make in science. He was a good experimenter and made the first neon light. He had always been interested in colours and in fact synthesised his interest in fine art and science with three papers on the colouring of Chinese glazes on pottery and porcelain.
There is good evidence that Collie should be credited with the discovery of neon, rather than Ramsay, in whose lab he did the work. He proposed a dynamic structure for benzene and discovered the oxonium salt of dimethylpyrone, which was the first example of such a salt. He invented the term polyketide for a group of compounds which play a major role in the bioynthesis of various natural products. It was not until 1955, almost 50 years later, that this theory was finally shown to be correct. He was probably, as if his other work was not enough, the first to use X-ray photography for medical purposes, when a patient with a needle fragment embedded in her thumb was sent to the college.
Collie continued to visit Skye every summer, often renting Glen Brittle House with the painter Colin Phillip, a fellow member of the SMC and a noted water colourist. (Collie himself was also an excellent artist, according to Phillip.)
On November 30, 1925, an article in the Aberdeen's Press and Journal reported a story which Collie had given at the Annual Dinner of the Cairngorm Club. Collie was Honorary President, and had been asked for a dinner speech. He told the assembled diners, for the first time in public, of a terrifying experience he had had 35 years earlier, on Ben Macdhui, while climbing alone in mist and snow. He was coming down from the cairn when he noticed that for every few steps he took, he heard a big crunch and then another crunch, as if someone was walking after him but taking steps three or four times the length of his own. He was seized with a blind terror and rushed down the mountain for several miles into the safety of Rothiemurchus Forest.
Some 12 years after the dinner speech, Collie told this story to A.M. Kellas, a lecturer and Himalayan climber. Kellas also, it turned out, had had a bad experience on Ben Macdhui's summit. Collie's story started the interest in what became known as "The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui" and those who are interested are pointed to books by Affleck Gray and Rennie McOwen.
When war broke out in 1939, Collie closed his London home and retired to Sligachan. He had by then lost most of his friends to old age, including Mackenzie, in 1933. When his old friend died, Collie made a solo ascent of Am Basteir. It was, he said, his last climb. He continued to fish. In the autumn of 1942, a friend invited him out for a day's fishing in the Storr Loch. It was very windy, yet Collie managed to find a relatively sheltered spot and pulled in dozens of trout. Trying to regain the bank the wind blew him into the loch and he was soaked. A chill rapidly developed into pneumonia and he died on the 1st November, 1942.
John Norman Collie was buried next to John Mackenzie in the old graveyard at Struan, by Loch Harport. A short walk leads to a skyline view of the Cuillin ridge, etched black against the sky. The graveyard is tiny and the graves humble. One supports a weathered lump of gabbro, the rough rock of which the Black Cuillin is made. It is an appropriately modest stone under which to rest, for one so travelled and learned, yet one so modest and unassuming. For most of his life Collie had pressed down on this roughest of rocks and it had held true. Surely it was only fitting that now a small piece of it could press down on him and hold firm what had been a fine life'
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John Rennie / Engineers
- Name : Rennie
- Born : 1761
- Died : 1821
- Category : Engineers
- Finest Moment : Construction of a bridge at Kelso (1799-1803), his favourite.
Born the son of a prosperous farmer at Phantassie, East Lothian on 7 June 1761, Rennie would have been immersed in farm machinery and, more critically, milling technology, from an early age. He worked during his youth with a millwright, before studying at Edinburgh University.
Some of us have laboured in factories during summer vacation periods; Rennie undertook contracts as a millwright, the first apparently involving the instalment of a threshing machine on his family's estate. No supper if it didn't work presumably!
He left University in 1783, touring various prominent engineering workshops, before returning to build his first bridge, over the Water of Leith in Edinburgh. Bridges were to be a constant theme in his work over the following decades, and in designing and building them he applied scientific theory rather than just make carbon copies of earlier, traditional designs. One common method, for example, was to build a hump-backed bridge, which was of course self-limiting in the distance it could safely span. It was also inconvenient for heavy traffic. Rennie preferred to build his roads over a flat span.
Major contracts Rennie became renowned for include the Crinan Canal (1793-1801), the Plymouth Breakwater (started 1812), and three London bridges; Waterloo (1811-17), Southwark (1814-19), and New London Bridge (1831). The latter now resides, somewhat bizarrely, in Arizona, USA, having been dismantled and shipped out, stone by stone, some 130 years after it was built.
He supervised work on Stevenson's Bell Rock Lighthouse, worked on canal constructions, fen drainage, dock improvements, and kept an eye on technological advances being made in other areas, such as steel manufacture. His two sons continued the business after his death in London, on 4 October 1821. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
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John Rollo, Lord of Duncrub / Other
- Name : Rollo, Lord of Duncrub
- Born : ?
- Died : d.c.1425
- Category : Other
- Finest Moment : Private Secretary to King Robert III
'A relation of William the Conqueror, and founder of the Duncrub family of Dunnung, near Auchterarder'
On 14 February, 1380, a John de Rollo obtained from Robert Stewart a charter confirming the grant formally given to him 'de terris de Findony, cum 'parte de Dunyn, et de terris de Drumcroube et de Ladcathy'.
Rollo was private Secretary to Robert III, and died in the beginning of the reign of James I. The Rollo family could trace their history even further back than that however, as an Eric Rollo, the Dane, had gained a settlement in Normandy as early as the 8th century. From the Dane were descended the Dukes of Normandy, leading to William the Conqueror.
With William in England arrived an Eric de Rollo, his Secretary. A descendent of his moved to Scotland in the reign of David I, obtaining a grant of houses and lands in the Lothians. A generation or more later John de Rollo settled in Perthshire, founding the family of Duncrub. The ninth baron died in 1852, leaving an only son, John Rogerson Rollo, Baron Dunning of Dunning and Pitcairn.
The village of Dunyn is now called Dunning of course, and is dominated by an impressive Norman steeple in St Serf's Church; the steeple is probably mid-12th century.
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