Scots Who Invented The Modern World Quiz

Answer: John Knox

John Knox (ca 1514-1572) hated Papal authority and devoted his life to removing all vestiges of the Catholic Church from his homeland. While in exile in Switzerland, he met John Calvin and inspired by his teachings, he brought a variation of Calvinism to Scotland in the early 1560s and very soon it became the Church of Scotland or Presbyterianism. In doing so, he was able to thwart Anglicanism, the Church of England, from gaining a foothold in Scotland.

To Herman, this was important for a couple of reasons. Catholicism and Anglicanism were linear religions, governed from the top down. Presbyterianism was a lateral religion where everyone had the same access to God, a religion of the masses. Unless you were Anglican (and rich), access to quality universities such as Oxford and Cambridge was impossible. But in Scotland, students of all stripes could attend St. Andrews, Edinburgh or Glasgow University. This created a positive climate for a culture of knowledge and learning that became the envy of Europe. The results would soon be evident.

Answer: Lord Kames

Lord Kames, born Henry Home (1696-1782), became a Lord when he was appointed to the bench in 1752. Beyond the pursuits already noted, he was an agriculturist of note who experimented with crop rotation and various fertilizers on his estate farm. Most importantly, he hosted Edinburgh's intelligentsia at grand parties where philosophical discussions ran wild over gallons of claret. He became the mentor to many of Edinburgh's brilliant youth who would go on to be even more famous than he, people such as Adam Smith, James Boswell and David Hume. As a jurist, he was a member of the panel that adjudicated the ground breaking Joseph Knight case. Knight was a Negro slave brought from Jamaica when his master moved to Scotland. Scotland was slave free at the time, by law, and the panel affirmed that Knight, when he was brought to Scotland, was no longer a chattel.

Of your other choices, Playfair was a noted Edinburgh architect at the time, Foulis was a leader in the printing business and Henry was among the many Scots to forge a new life in America in the 1700s. His son was Patrick Henry.

Answer: James Watt

The first steam engine was, in fact, invented in 1698 by Thomas Savery, an Englishman, and improved upon by another Englishman, Thomas Newcomen in 1712. However, they were crude instruments and the engine had only one practical application, the removal of water in coal mines. At that, they were barely useful.

James Watt (1736-1819) was the son of a merchant who sold maritime paraphernalia to sailors. His mother was well educated and he was home-schooled by her. An inquisitive tinkerer, the notion of steam engines had long intrigued him and after much experimentation, he improved those earlier designs into a practicable engine in 1769 that would have utility in other industries. The Industrial Revolution would soon be underway and the world, as people knew it at the time, would change dramatically.

Elias Howe and Cyrus McCormick were both American born. Howe patented the first American made sewing machine while McCormick was a pioneer in the production of farm machinery.

Answer: William Burke

Richard Bright (1789-1858) graduated in 1813 and specialized in kidney disease. Bright's disease, commonly referred to as nephritis, was one of his discoveries. Thomas Addison (1793-1860) discovered Addison's disease, a degenerative disease of the adrenal glands. Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866), like his colleagues, is honored with Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphoma and blood disease that he identified. These physician's have something else in common - they were English but chose to take their medical training in Edinburgh rather than Oxford or Cambridge. Perhaps they couldn't attend those institutions because of their religious faith but nevertheless, their body of work speaks to the quality of student the medical school at Edinburgh was attracting. Other famous graduates include Joseph Lister who pioneered antiseptic surgery and the discoverer of carbon dioxide, Joseph Black.

Now, the curious case of William Burke. The school became one of the preeminent colleges for the studying of anatomy under the stewardship of Dr. Robert Knox. As enrolment expanded, the need for cadavers became more acute and it wasn't being met by normal means - the bodies of executed criminals. Ultimately, Knox was paying for specimens, no questions asked. Grave robbing of the recently deceased was a common practice but Burke and his partner William Hare went one step farther. They murdered their victims and sold the bodies to Knox. They were eventually apprehended and in exchange for his life, Hare testified against Burke. Irony prevails. After he was hung, Burke became a school cadaver! Knox was never implicated but eventually his reputation was impacted and he relocated to a cancer clinic in London.

Answer: Adam Smith

Adam Smith (1723-1790) published "Wealth of Nations" in 1776 and it's been required reading for economics students ever since. A student in moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow under the tutelage of Frances Hutcheson, he lectured in Edinburgh upon graduation then returned to Glasgow with a professorship in philosophy. Tiring of life as an academic, he accepted a financially generous offer to tutor a young aristocrat which allowed the opportunity to travel throughout Europe for several years where he encountered many of the noted philosophers of the era such as Voltaire. When the position ended in 1766, he returned home and devoted the next ten years to writing "Wealth of Nations".

Philosopher David Hume and geologist James Hutton were among his closest friends. Thomas Malthus was another political economist but he was English and did most of his work a generation after Smith.

Answer: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was English born and is most famous today for formulating the "Dictionary of the English Language" published in 1755. It served as the pre-eminent resource for the topic until 1928 when the Oxford English Dictionary was finally completed after almost 70 years of compilation. He was also the subject of what is deemed to be the first great biography ever written.

The author of that biography was James Boswell (1740-1795). The son of an Edinburgh judge, he had a typically aristocratic education and graduated with a degree in law in 1762. He met Johnson shortly afterward during a trip to London and they became fast friends despite their discrepancy in age. After traveling in Europe for three years, he returned to Scotland and practiced law for ten years but always made it a point to visit Johnson for at least a month out of every year. Something of a bon vivant, Boswell enjoyed the social scene in London more than being a legal advocate so he abandoned his legal career and took to writing. He kept copious notes of his meetings with Johnson that culminated in his "The Life of Samuel Johnson", published in 1791. What set it apart from typical biographies of the era was Boswell's attention to detail and that it dealt with the man himself rather than his accomplishments. It set the standard for biographies and is still considered the finest of the genre in many circles.

Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759-1796) was simply "The Bard" to the Scots. Easily the most popular Scottish poet of his day, his popularity remains undiminished to this day. Name me another poet who is commemorated with his own day every year, January 25th, his birth date. He was named the greatest Scot of all time in a poll commissioned by STV (Scottish TV) in 2009.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was also Edinburgh born and one of the first authors to popularize the "historical novel" with such works as "Ivanhoe", "Rob Roy" and "The Lady of the Lake". Immensely popular at the time, he might have been the first British author to achieve worldwide fame during his own lifetime.

Answer: Arabia - T.E. Lawrence

T.E. Lawrence became the famous "Lawrence of Arabia" and that would have been a good answer if only he was Scottish. But alas, he was born in Tremadog in Northern Wales.

There were two notable Alexander Mackenzie's to come to prominence in Canada. The first was the noted explorer. His family moved from the Outer Hebrides to New York in 1774 when he was only eight then moved to Montreal in 1776 with the outbreak of the American Revolution. He started employment with The North West Co. in 1779 and by 1788 had founded Fort Chipewyan in what is now Northern Alberta. He discovered the Mackenzie River and followed its route right to the Arctic Ocean in 1789. In 1793, he crossed the Rocky Mountains and made his way to the Pacific Ocean and in so doing, became the first European to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of the Rio Grande. The other Mackenzie was born in Perthshire, Scotland in 1822 and moved to Canada when he was 20. He worked as a stone mason and general contractor but also was involved in politics as soon as he arrived in the country. He became Canada's second Prime Minister in 1773, succeeding Sir John A. Macdonald.

Macquarie was born on the Isle of Mull in 1762 and at the age of 14 began a military career that found him fighting in the American Revolutionary War in 1777. He was subsequently posted to duty in Halifax, New York, Jamaica, Egypt and India rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1805. In 1809, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales and served in that capacity for 12 years. During that time, he oversaw the exploration of the Queensland coast and territory west of the Blue Mountains, laid the groundwork for making Sydney and Hobart habitable urban areas rather than shanty towns and encouraged the growth of the colony through settlement in two ways; recruiting settlers from the homeland and encouraging inmates from the penal colony to remain there and contribute to the good of that society upon their release. On his grave in Mull are inscribed the words "The Father of Australia".

David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland in 1813, the son of a poor but pious tea merchant. He began working at the age of 10 in a textile mill and cobbled together an education by attending night school and reading voraciously whenever he could. In 1834, he read an advertisement calling for missionaries so he attended classes to become a minister (his father approved) and also took classes in science (his father did not approve). Eventually, he was able to convince his father that through medicine, he could save the body first then save the soul. Armed with degrees in religion and medicine, his intention was to start a mission in China but the first Opium War precluded his attempt and Africa became his alternative. There he went in 1841. He spent most of the last 32 years of his life in sectors of that continent that no white man had ever visited. He saved the lives of many natives through his medical knowledge primarily through the use of quinine as a treatment for malaria, converting them to Christianity in the process. In his travels, he was one of the first Europeans to traverse the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, discovered Victoria Falls and opened up the way for British trade with natives.

Answer: Sandford Fleming

I anticipate that this will be a difficult question to get the correct answer on unless you knew it or guessed well... certainly I didn't know this stuff until reading Herman's book. However, it's darn good trivia in my opinion.

Sandford Fleming (1827-1915) was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland and immigrated to Canada with his older brother in 1845. He was employed as a surveyor and was instrumental in the building of railways in the Maritime Provinces and Quebec. He first proposed the construction of a transcontinental railroad in 1858 but Great Britain wasn't interested in the notion at the time. But with Canadian confederation in 1867, the time was ripe for such a project and Fleming was appointed to survey the route. Construction began in 1872 and concluded in 1885.

In 1876, while visiting Ireland, he missed a train scheduled to leave at 7:45 because he thought it was an evening departure rather than a morning one. He concluded that a universal 24 hour clock would eliminate this type of confusion. He saw it as a good way to design schedules for train traffic, especially for those traversing continents. He proposed establishing 24 worldwide time zones coinciding with longitudinal lines 15° apart with Greenwich, England designated as point zero. He promoted the concept tirelessly and finally, at an international conference held in Washington, D.C. in 1882, his "invention" was ratified. On November 17, 1883 time around the world was synchronized for the first time. It should be noted that an Italian mathematician named Quirico Filopanti made exactly the same proposal in a book published in 1858 with Rome designated as 0 meridian. It seems that the book was long forgotten and his proposal was not acknowledged until long after his death in 1894.

Your other choices are people that I golf with from time to time... but I'm sure that there are famous people in this world who share the name. I borrowed Herman's book from McNaughton!

Answer: Andrew Carnegie

Astor was born in Germany and immigrated to America in 1784. Ranked third among wealthy Americans historically, he accumulated his wealth in the fur trade. Vanderbilt was an American native of Dutch heritage. Deemed to be the second richest American, he owed his fortune to steamship lines and railroads. Rockefeller was the richest of these early day Americans and might have been the richest man on earth during his lifetime. Oil, oil, oil! His roots have been traced to 17th Century French Huguenots.

Some resources list Andrew Carnegie as the fifth wealthiest American after the other three and Stephen Girard. Other resources suggest he might have been the second richest man in the world after Rockefeller. Perhaps because he was such a generous philanthropist, his standing in the hierarchy might have been diminished because he gave large portions of his wealth to charity.

Carnegie was born under extremely dire circumstances in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1835. His father operated a weaving loom out of his home and following the industrial revolution when most weaving was mechanized, his family was bordering on starvation. The family immigrated to Pittsburgh in 1848 and Andrew went to work in a cotton mill then later as a telegraph messenger. A quick learner, he advanced in the company but earned his first million by 1864 through shrewd investments in the Pullman Car Co. and the oil business. He was careful to cultivate strategic business contacts and ultimately used them to amass his fortune in the steel industry in the mid 1880s. This quote from one of his essays early in life described his philosophy - "Man must have an idol and the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry. No idol is more debasing than the worship of money!" True to his word, when he sold his steel business to J.P. Morgan in 1901, his personal wealth amounted to something in the neighborhood of $400m. In retirement, he started spending it, primarily in endowments for the arts and education including the funding of hundreds of libraries around the globe. At his death in 1919, $30M of his fortune remained and that too was given away.

Answer: Francis Hutcheson

Francis Hutcheson was an "Ulster-Scot" born in N. Ireland in 1694. His earliest education came at the foot of his father and grandfather who were both Presbyterian ministers. He attended the University of Glasgow for six years from 1710 to 1716 and upon graduation with a degree in theology, returned to Ireland to commence a career in academia. In 1719, he founded a private school in Dublin where he taught for ten years before assuming the Chair of Moral Philosophy at his alma mater.

When Hutcheson first attended Glasgow, two opposing views concerning man's place in society were prevalent. The Presbyterian view was that man was inherently bad and it was the churches role through religion to make him a functional part of society. The view taken by Thomas Hobbes and others was that man was inherently bad and it was the government's or monarch's obligation to make him a functional member of society. Of course, I simplify these philosophies but that's what these opposing, yet similar, views construed.

Gorshen Carmichael was Hutcheson's moral philosophy professor at Glasgow and the person whom he succeeded as Chair. Carmichael was influenced by the Englishman Lord Shaftesbury and the German Samuel Pufendorf into the belief that man was indeed NOT inherently bad at all, "that the distinction between right and wrong is part of the constitution of human nature". In turn, these concepts influenced Hutcheson. Again, to simplify, he believed that man loved himself and others and that doing good deeds within a societal context makes everyone feel happier. Self-interest and altruism were compatible.

Hutcheson lectured five days a week and his classes were always over subscribed. Furthermore, he lectured in the vernacular, probably the first professor in Europe to eschew Latin as the "teaching language", which opened up learning to everyone, not just to those of elite birth who grew up familiar with the classics. All his philosophical theories could be summarized with one word - liberty. Liberty in all facets of life; social, economic, political and intellectual with the ultimate goal of achieving happiness for oneself and others. Say, doesn't the U.S. Constitution echo these sentiments somewhat?