Notable residents of Edinburgh |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Tuesday, 26 May 2009 | |
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Famous authors of the city include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus series of crime thrillers, J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, who wrote her first book in an Edinburgh coffee shop (Nicolson's Cafe, the Elephant House and Black Medicine), Adam Smith, economist, born in Kirkcaldy, and author of The Wealth of Nations, Walter Scott, the author of famous titles such as Rob Roy and Ivanhoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, creator of Treasure Island and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Edinburgh has been home to the actor Sir Sean Connery, famed as the first cinematic James Bond Ronnie Corbett, a comedian and actor, best known as one of The Two Ronnies; and Dylan Moran, the Irish comedian. Famous city artists include the portrait painters Sir Henry Raeburn, Sir David Wilkie and Allan Ramsay. Historians such as Douglas Johnson and Arthur Marwick had roots here. The city has produced or been home to musicians that have been extremely successful in modern times, particularly Ian Anderson, frontman of the band Jethro Tull; Wattie Buchan, lead singer and founding member of punk band The Exploited; Shirley Manson, lead singer for the band Garbage; The Proclaimers, a musical ensemble of two brothers; the Bay City Rollers; Boards of Canada and Idlewild. Edinburgh is the hometown of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who was born in the city and attended Fettes College; Robin Harper the co-convener of the Scottish Green Party; and John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the United States Declaration of Independence, and later president of Princeton University. On the more sinister side, famous criminals from Edinburgh's history include Deacon Brodie, pillar of society by day and burglar by night, who is said to have influenced Robert Louis Stevenson's story, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; the murderers Burke and Hare, who provided fresh corpses for anatomical dissection by the famous surgeon Robert Knox; and Major Weir a notorious warlock. Scotland has a rich history in science and engineering, with Edinburgh contributing its fair share of famous names. James Clerk Maxwell, the founder of the modern theory of electromagnetism, was born here and educated at the Edinburgh Academy and University of Edinburgh, as was the telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. Other names connected to the city include Max Born, physicist and Nobel laureate; Charles Darwin, the biologist who discovered natural selection; David Hume, a philosopher, economist and historian; James Hutton, regarded as the "Father of Geology"; John Napier inventor of logarithms;chemist and one of the founders of thermodynamics Joseph Black; pioneering medical researchers Joseph Lister and James Young Simpson; chemist and discoverer of the element nitrogen, Daniel Rutherford; mathematician and developer of the maclaurin series, Colin Maclaurin and Ian Wilmut, the geneticist involved in the cloning of Dolly the sheep just outside Edinburgh. The stuffed carcass of Dolly the sheep is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland. The lighthouse engineering family, the Stevenson family was based in Edinburgh. |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 May 2009 ) |
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