Heriot-Watt University is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and was subsequently granted university status by royal charter in 1966. It is the eighth-oldest higher education institution in the United Kingdom. The name Heriot-Watt was taken from Scottish inventor James Watt and Scottish philanthropist and goldsmith George Heriot.
Sir John Macleod Ball is a British mathematician and former Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He was the president of the International Mathematical Union from 2003 to 2006 and a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.
Leroy "Lee" CroninFRSE FRSC is the Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and appointed to the Regius Chair of Chemistry in 2013. He was previously the Gardiner Chair, appointed April 2009.
Sir David Cecil Smith was a British botanist. Smith was most notable for his research into the biology of symbiosis and became a leading authority on it. Smith discovered that lichens and Radiata (coelenterates) shared a similar biological mechanism in carbohydrate metabolism. Further research by Smith demonstrated similar processes in organisms that worked within a symbiotic relationship.
Sir Martyn Poliakoff is a British chemist known for his work on green chemistry and for being the main presenter on the popular YouTube channel Periodic Videos. The core subjects of his academic work are supercritical fluids, infrared spectroscopy and lasers. He is a research professor in chemistry at the University of Nottingham. As well as carrying out research at the University of Nottingham, he is a lecturer, teaching a number of modules including green chemistry.
Sir Frederick Edward Warner FRS, FREng was a British chemical engineer.
Denis R. Hall is a professor of photonics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. In 2004 he was awarded the Association of Laser Users award for his contributions to the development of industrial lasers and their applications.
William (Bill) Cochran was a Scottish physicist. He is best known for "pioneering contributions to the science of X-ray crystallography", for which he was awarded the Hughes Medal in 1978.
Thomas Lothian Johnston FRSE was a Scottish economist. He was professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University in 1966–1976. He was the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1993–1996. In 1985 Johnston was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Geoffrey Frederick Hewitt was a British chemical engineer, and Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, where from 1993 to 1999 he was the Courtaulds Professor of chemical engineering.
Lillian Mary Pickford was a pioneering British neuroendocrinologist. She was the first woman to be elected to the Pharmacological Society and the first woman appointed to a medical professorship at the University of Edinburgh.
Martin James Gilbert FRSE is a British businessman, and the vice chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen and chairman of Aberdeen Standard Investments. He was chief executive (CEO) of Aberdeen Asset Management, an international investment management company, which he co-founded in 1983. He was chairman of FirstGroup from April 1995 to January 2014. He became a patron of The Aberdeen Law Project in 2010.
Charles Kemball CBE PRSE FRS FRSC FRIC was a Scottish chemist who served as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1988–91) and as president of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (1974-6). He pioneered the use of mass spectrometry. and was a leading expert in heterogeneous catalysis.
Jason Meredith Reese (24 June 1967 – 8 March 2019 was a British engineering scientist, and Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.
Neil Campbell FRSE FRSC OBE was a Scottish chemist and amateur athlete. He served as Vice President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1972 to 1975. He was associated with the University of Edinburgh for 74 years of his life.
Anne Neville was the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in emerging technologies and Professor of Tribology and Surface Engineering at the University of Leeds.
Ineke De Moortel is a Belgian applied mathematician in Scotland, where she is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of St Andrews, director of research in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at St Andrews, and president of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. Her research concerns the computational and mathematical modelling of solar physics, and particularly of the Sun's corona.
Alexandra Jane Shepard is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow. In 2018 Shepard was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition for her work in gender history and the social history of early modern Britain. In 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Raffaella Ocone is Professor of Chemical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2006 she was awarded the title Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and in the 2019 New Year Honours she was appointed OBE.
Helen Hastie is the Head of the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh and a RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow. She specialises in Human-Robot Interaction and Multimodal interfaces. Hastie has undertaken projects such as AI personal assistants for remote robots, autonomous systems and spoken dialogue systems for sectors in defence and energy. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
