Glasgow’s history is best told through the people who made it, and this chapter gathers more than seventy of them. Some were born in the city; others arrived and were changed by it, or changed it. Together they span fifteen centuries, from St Mungo in the sixth century to the footballers, actors and First Ministers of our own time.

The University of Glasgow made the city one of the intellectual capitals of the Enlightenment. Adam Smith became a professor there in 1751, a quarter of a century before The Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776. Joseph Black worked out the theory of latent heat in Glasgow; James Watt, the university’s instrument maker, conceived the separate condenser while repairing a model steam engine; and Lord Kelvin held the chair of natural philosophy for more than half a century. Medicine has its own roll of honour, from Joseph Lister's antiseptic surgery at the Royal Infirmary to Ian Donald's pioneering of obstetric ultrasound and the virologist June Almeida, who first imaged a human coronavirus.

Industry and commerce produced their own heroes. Robert Napier became known as the father of Clyde shipbuilding, William Arrol built the Forth Bridge and Tower Bridge, and Thomas Lipton turned a Gorbals grocery into a worldwide tea empire. Others were remarkable women whose achievements were long overlooked: Isabella Elder, who funded medical education for women; Kate Cranston, whose tea rooms gave Charles Rennie Mackintosh his best-known commissions; and Mary Barbour, who led the rent strikes of 1915.

Politics and protest run through the chapter too, from the Red Clydesiders John Maclean, James Maxton and John Wheatley to Jimmy Reid of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in, and three Prime Ministers with Glasgow roots: Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Andrew Bonar Law and Gordon Brown. The arts are represented by writers such as Alasdair Gray, Edwin Morgan and Douglas Stuart, painters like Joan Eardley, and entertainers from Lulu to Billy Connolly. Every biography below sets its subject in the Glasgow they knew.

Every article in this chapter: