One of seven children, Doyle was born on 22 May, 1859, the son and
grandson of artists (his grandfather was a political cartoonist in
"Punch" magazine).
He was educated at Stoneyhurst and studied medicine at Edinburgh
University. After a spell as ship's surgeon on a whaling ship,
he worked as a doctor from 1882-90 in practices in Southsea and London.
But the success of his early fiction encouraged him to give this up
and devote himself to writing. His first short story was published in
1879.
His early stories such as "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) and "Sign of the Four" (
1890) introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson for the first time. Holmes was
based on a forensic medicine teacher at Edinburgh University, Dr Joseph Bell.
The name Holmes had been derived from the American author Oliver Wendell
Holmes. His "The White Company" set in the Hundred Years' War was regarded
as one of the outstanding historical novels of his time. But it was
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" published in the Strand Magazine
from 1891 to 1893 which gave him immediate, widespread fame. He killed
off Holmes in 1893 but he reappeared in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
published in 1902.
In 1896 Doyle became a war correspondent in the Sudan and he served as a doctor in the 1899-1902 Boer War in South Africa. He was knighted in 1902 for his service in the war. He wrote a history of the Boer War which proved popular at the time and as a war correspondent he later wrote an account of the British campaign in France and Flanders. His interest in spiritualism became known during World War I and he wrote a number of books on the subject. In 1927 the Sherlock Holmes stories were published as "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes." Doyle was married twice and died in Sussex in 1930.
John Logie Baird (1888-1946)
Born in Helensburgh (there is a bust of Baird on the waterfront there), Baird studied electrical engineering at the Glasgow Royal College of Technology (now Strathclyde University). He suffered from ill health and could not obtain regular employment so he turned to invention. An early failure was trying to make synthetic diamonds. For a time he worked in the USA, where a jam-making enterprise also failed. He started work on the transmission of pictures and in 1925 he constructed a 30-line system using a mechanical scanner with a spinning disc. He demonstrated this to members
of the Royal Institute on 26 January 1926. He transmitted pictures across the Atlantic in 1928. He started the first TV station in the world and provided broadcasts for the BBC, including the first outside broadcast of the Derby in 1931.
A poor businessman, he did not have enough capital to develop his company and turned down an offer of 100,000 pounds for his invention, saying he could not sleep at night with that amount of money. Meantime, the cathode-ray tube system was being developed by Marconi and the BBC adopted the rival system in 1937. But he continued to develop new sound and vision systems including high definition colour and stereoscopic television and a "phonovision" system recording video on a disc storage system, a fore-runner of compact discs. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of radar and fibre optics.
David Hume (1711-1776)
Born in Edinburgh into a Calvinist family in 1711, Hume entered Edinburgh University at the age of 12 to study law, leaving less than three years later, having concentrated more on his own interests than his course work. After a brief business career in Bristol, he moved to France and took up writing. His development of philosophical ideas had been influenced by the concepts of science and observation. His first major book "A Treatise of Human Nature" in 1739 was not an immediate success and he returned to Scotland as a companion to the Marquis of Annandale in the Borders.
His next book "Essays, Moral and Political" in 1741 was more successful. Hume proclaimed the dominance of human reason over religious faith and, at a time when religious dogma was followed by most people without question, he was a self-proclaimed atheist. He was thus not able to become professor of philosophy at Edinburgh University because of his "anti-religious" views.
Mixing a diplomatic career in France with further writing, his "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" had an influence on Adam Smith. While in Paris (as Secretary to the British Embassy from 1763-66) he became popular with French society and helped the writer Rousseau. Hume returned to Edinburgh in 1769 and mixed with the intellectuals of the capital during the phase described as "The Scottish Enlightenment". His associates included the economist Adam Smith, the portraitist and essayist Allan Ramsay and the historian William Robertson. In addition to writing books on philosophy which have influenced thinking to this day, Hume also wrote a number of books of history, including works on the reigns of King James VI and Charles I and also a "Natural History of
Religion". A recent poll of academics put voted Hume as the Scot who had the greatest influence in the last 1,000 years.
Allan Ramsay (1713-1784)
Son of Allan Ramsay the poet, he was born in Edinburgh and went to London and Rome to study art. Returning to Edinburgh he undertook a number of portrait commissions and became an established artist. He moved to London and soon had a wide number of distinguished clients, including George III, Flora Macdonald (of Bonnie Prince Charlie fame), Hume, Gibbon and Rousseau - but the latter did not like the result! He led the way in a more relaxed style of presenting the subject of the portrait, instead of the previous more formal approach. He was a part of the intellectual society of the day
and was a friend of Dr Johnson. As the leading portrait painter of the day, he amassed a large fortune and spent some time in Italy before retiring to Dover where he died on August 10, 1784. The National Portrait Galleries in both London and Edinburgh have examples of his work.
Sir Sean Connery (1930 - )
Regarded by some as the greatest president Scotland never had, Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August, 1930. This was a poor area of the city and his father was a lorry driver and his mother earned a few shillings as a tea lady. Sean helped the family finances by working as a milk delivery boy from the age of 9 to 13. He left school at age 13 and became a brick layer, a bouncer and a French polisher before he joined the Merchant Navy. He was invalided out three years later because of stomach ulcers but it was during his spell as a seaman that he obtained his tattoos "Scotland Forever" on one arm and "Mum and Dad" on the other.
Keen on body building, he entered the Mr Universe contest in London in 1953 and came third. But that led to some small acting parts and over the next five years he appeared in a number of minor roles. In the early 60s, after appearing in "The Longest Day" he turned down a role as Tarzan to appear in a spy movie instead. The title of that film was "Dr No". Between 1962 and 1971 he appeared in six Bond films (plus "Never Say Never Again" in 1983). He also appeared in "The Hill" and "Marnie" and a number of other films between the Bond roles.
Sean Connery married actress Diane Cilento and they had a son, Jason, in 1963. After leaving the Bond series, his career seemed to falter, and he appeared in some films he would probably rather forget. There was a gap of a few years after playing Bond again in 1983 and then the number of roles exploded, appearing in ten films between 1986 and 1990, including "Highlander" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and an Oscar winning performance as a New York cop in "The Untouchables". In the 1990s his position as a mega star has advanced still further (he was once described by Steven Spielberg as "one of the seven true film stars") and he has also produced a number of films in which he has starred.
In 1991 was he was given a standing ovation when he was awarded the Freedom of Edinburgh in the Usher Hall but it was to be the end of 1999 before he was awarded the knighthood which many thought he had earned many years earlier. There is talk of him selling his house in Marbella in Spain and moving to live in the land of his birth. A longtime supporter of the Scottish National Party, he came to Scotland to participate in the election campaign for the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
