A selection of Homecoming events celebrating Great Scottish Minds & Innovations

Whatever its source, it's clear that the ingenuity and inventiveness of the Scots have shaped the world in which we live today. In 2009, a number of Homecoming exhibitions, concerts, festivals and gatherings will celebrate Scotland’s contribution in many scientific and cultural fields.

John Muir ‘The Father of the National Park Service’
One man, Scottish by birth, has been globally acknowledged as a pioneer for environmental awareness and preservation.

John Muir was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, in 1838. At the age of 11 his family emigrated to rural Wisconsin, USA. From his Scottish coastal roots John Muir developed a lifelong passion for the natural world. He studied botany, biology, geology and glaciology and wrote comprehensively about his subjects.

He was on personal terms with three presidents and advised on the establishment of National Forests and the U.S. Forest Service. His influence on Theodore Roosevelt shaped the environmental movement of America and had a direct influence on establishing five National Parks – including Yosemite and The Grand Canyon.

John Muir’s influence has spanned continents and in this, the year of Scotland’s Homecoming, his life and robust legacy is celebrated. ‘The John Muir Odyssey’ will give visitors a chance to experience first-hand the beautiful coastal region in which he was born. Various events will take place throughout 2009 between Dunbar and neighbouring North Berwick including lectures and guided trips on land and sea, to walk in his footsteps and witness the landscape that inspired a lifetime’s work.

The John Muir Odyssey celebrates the life and legacy of this great Scot.

Sir James Black
Sir James Black is feted for his invention of beta-blockers as an effective treatment for heart conditions. Yet his determination to work with the pharmaceutical industry to combat coronary artery disease was initially regarded with great scepticism by his peers. Winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988 confirmed his place in the annals of 20th century pharmacology.

Sir James Black is one of 6 featured 'Famous Scots' whose family history is being traced at Scotland's Peoples' Centre's Famous Scots exhibition.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Glasgow architectural hero, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, left a remarkable legacy to the city in the fields of architecture and design. Most famous for his Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow School of Art and Hill House, Mackintosh's unique style – based on the belief that a revival of the Scottish Baronial style, adapted to modern society would meet contemporary needs – went largely unappreciated in Scotland during his own lifetime.

With Robert Adam, he shared an appreciation of the romantic and a compulsion to design everything down to the smallest detail. In the Salon de Luxe, for example, the Willow Tea Room's inner sanctum, the waitresses even wore chokers and dresses designed by Mackintosh himself.

Despite not getting the plaudits he deserved in his lifetime, the Mackintosh legacy lives on. The continuing popularity of the Mackintosh style has created a lucrative market for a whole range of products and today the Mackintosh brand is worth millions.

The newly reopened Kelvingrove Art Gallery has a new gallery titled “Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style”. And the Glasgow School of Art continues to produce a conveyor-belt of talented artists.

The Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art celebrates its centenary this year with 'Mackintosh 100' events planned throughout the year.

John Macadam
A Scotsman, John Macadam from Ayrshire, had already made road-travel by whatever means a smoother ride when in 1816 he started making road surfaces with crushed stone bound with gravel on a firm base of large stones. A camber, making the road slightly convex, ensured the rainwater rapidly drained off the road and did not penetrate the foundations. This way of building roads later became known as the Macadamized system and it's from Macadam that we now have the word tarmac.

John Boyd Dunlop
It was another Ayrshire man, John Boyd Dunlop, who in February 1888 whilst working as a vet in Belfast, invented the pneumatic, solid rubber tyre after worrying about the effects on his ten-year-old son of his bone-shaking solid-tyred tricycle. His experiments were so successful that Thornton & Co. an India rubber goods manufacturer in Edinburgh, took the commission to start manufacturing the tyres. And of course, the name Dunlop has been associated with tyres ever since.


Bill Shankly
'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.' A successful player in his day, 'Shanks' will, however, always be best remembered as a passionate and inspirational manager. In 1959, he was appointed manager of Liverpool where he led them from the English second division to win three English League Championships. He laid the foundations for what was a period of dominance for Liverpool in England and Europe during the 1970s.

Find out more about Macadam, Dunlop and Shankly and other famous Ayrshire sons and daughters at the Ayrshire Innovators exhibition.