Scottish independence is the notion of Scotland as a sovereign state, independent from the United Kingdom, and refers to the political movement that is campaigning to bring it about.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established in 1783. As of 2021, there are around 1,800 Fellows.
Alyn Edward Smith is a Scottish politician. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stirling at the 2019 general election. He also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Scotland from 2004 to 2019. He has been serving as SNP Spokesperson for Europe and EU Accession since December 2022.
David Martin is a Scottish politician who has served as co-convener of the Citizens' Assembly of Scotland since 2019. A member of the Scottish Labour Party, he was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1984 to 2019, having first represented the Lothians constituency until 1999 and then for the Scotland constituency. He was the United Kingdom's longest serving MEP and the second longest serving MEP in the whole European Parliament.
Nicola Joy Nadia Benedetti is an Italian-Scottish classical solo violinist and festival director. Her ability was recognised when she was a child, including the award of BBC Young Musician of the Year when she was 16. She works with orchestras in Europe and America as well as with Alexei Grynyuk, her regular pianist. Since 2012, she has played the Gariel Stradivarius violin. She became the first woman to lead the Edinburgh International Festival when she was made Festival Director on 1 October 2022.
Maggie Chapman is a Zimbabwean-Scottish politician and lecturer who is a Scottish Green Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for North East Scotland. She was co-convenor of the Scottish Greens from November 2013 to August 2019, serving with Patrick Harvie, and was the party's lead candidate for the 2019 European election.
Sharon Elizabeth Marie Ashbrook is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of St Andrews. Her research is focused on the application of multinuclear solid-state NMR spectroscopy techniques as well as the combination of these techniques with first-principles calculations to investigate structure, order and dynamics of solid state materials.
John Watt Butters FRSE FRSGS (1863–1946) was a Scottish mathematician who served as Rector of Ardrossan Academy from 1899 to 1928.
Alice König is a British historian. She is Director of the Centre for the Literatures of the Roman Empire at the University of St Andrews and lectures in Latin and Classical Studies.
Alice Brown is a Scottish academic who is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Chancellor of the University of Abertay as of 2019. She was on the consultative steering group that advised on procedural aspects when the new Scottish Parliament was being set up. Her work included promoting the equal representation of women. She was the first Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, serving for two terms between 2002 and 2009, and was a member of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council 2008–2012. She was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 1998–2003 and was elected as the first female General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) 2011–2013. She was chair of the Scottish Funding Council since until her term of office ended on October 2, 2017.
Christine Anne Jardine is a Scottish Liberal Democrat politician serving as the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Women and Equalities, the Cabinet Office and Scotland since July 2022. She was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh West in 2017.
Eva Hevia is a Professor of Organometallic Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the University of Bern.
Victoria Jane Martin is a Scottish physicist who is Professor of Collider Physics at the University of Edinburgh. She works on the ATLAS experiment on the Higgs boson.
Malcolm Macdonald is a Scottish space technology engineer, academic, and director. He is a Professor and the Chair of Applied Space Technology at the University of Strathclyde, and a visiting professor at University College Dublin. He was Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications, SoXSA, from 2014 - 2020, and a non-executive member of the UK Space Agency Steering Board from 2017 - 2020. He is an acknowledged expert in space research, and in 2021 was referred to in the media as "Scotland's leading space expert".
John Edward is Head of Operations of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs Scotland's first international relations institute, previously a charity CEO, an EU and Scottish civil servant and campaigner.
Rosalind Jane Allen is a soft matter physicist and Professor of Theoretical Microbial Ecology at the Biological Physics at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany, and (part-time) Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland She is a member of the centre for synthetic biology and systems biology where her research investigates the organisation of microbe populations.
Karen Jane Faulds is a Scottish academic and Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde. She develops surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for bioanalysis, and has won several awards for her research, including the Coblentz Society Craver Award.
Nicola Stanley-Wall FRSE FRSB is a Professor of Microbiology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee who works on the molecular mechanism of biofilm formation. Her laboratory investigates how bacteria come together to form social communities called biofilms. More specifically, her research analyses the way the molecules in the biofilm matrix provide support and protection to biofilms formed by the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis.
Debora Kayembe Buba is a Scottish human rights lawyer and political activist. She has served on the board of the Scottish Refugee Council, and is a member of the office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Court Bar Association.
Kirsty Hughes, Ph.D, FRSE is a political scientist, founder and Director of Scottish Centre on European Relations, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE).
