Greatest Ever Scot

[figheadair]

I understand, but does that make him the greatest or merely the most famous? While Burns is second to none in terms of creating and celebrating Scottish identity, I would suggest that Smith and Bell, for example, have had much more influence and impact worldwide.

I agree wholeheartedly with your first and last sentence but Burns is second to none in terms of creating and celebrating Scottish identity? I would have to disagree. Far more influential in developing and promoting a pan-Scottish identity was Sir Walter Scott without whom tartan, and thereby clan associations etc would probably not have survived into the last century let alone this one.

Oh, and no-one seems to have remembered Sir Alexander Fleming and penicillin. Then there's Napier - Logerithms; Dunlop - Pnumatic Tyre; RL Stevenson - Kidnapped etc; Tar McAdam - Bitumen etc etc