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The Royal Society of Edinburgh's Building on the corner of George St and Hanover St

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. The membership consists of over 1400 peer-elected fellows, who are known as Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, denoted FRSE in official titles. It provides annual grants totalling over half a million pounds for research and entrepreneurship. The Society organises public lectures and promotes the sciences in schools throughout Scotland.

It covers a broader selection of fields than the affiliated Royal Society of London including literature and history.

At the start of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh's intellectual climate fostered many clubs and societies (see Scottish Enlightenment). Though there were several that treated the arts, sciences and medicine, the most prestigious was the Philosophical Society which was founded in 1738. With the help of University of Edinburgh professors like Joseph Black, William Cullen and John Walker, this society transformed itself into the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and in 1786 it issued the first edition of its new journal Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (ISSN 0263-5933).

As the end of the century drew near, the younger members like Sir James Hall embraced Lavoisier's new nomenclature and the members split over the practical and theoretical objectives of the society. This resulted in the founding of the Wernerian Society (1808-1858), a parallel organisation that focused more upon natural history and scientific research that could be used to improve Scotland's weak agricultural and industrial base. Under the leadership of Prof. Robert Jameson, the Wernerians first founded Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society (1808-1821) and then the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1822), thereby diverting the output of the Royal Society's Transactions. Thus, for the first four decades of the nineteenth century, the RSE's members published brilliant articles in two different journals. By the 1850s, Jameson and his partner Sir David Brewster lost their influence and the society once again could unify its membership under one journal.

During the nineteenth century the society produced many scientists whose ideas laid the foundation of the modern sciences. From the twentieth century onward, the society functioned not only as focal point for Scotland's eminent scientists, but also the arts and humanities. It still exists today and continues to promote original research in Scotland. The current president is the mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah.

• Keith Medal
• Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize

Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, denoted by the use of the initialism FRSE in official titles, have included:

• Alexander Aitken, New Zealand mathematician
• Jack Allen, Canadian physicist who helped discover the superfluid phase of matter in 1937 using liquid helium, Professor of Physics at the University of St Andrews
• Sir William Eric Kinloch Anderson, Provost of Eton College
• John Arbuthnott, 16th Viscount of Arbuthnott, Scottish soldier and businessman
• Struther Arnott, Scottish molecular biologist and Vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews
• Robert Bald, surveyor and mining engineer
• Sir Derek Barton, chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
• Sir James W. Black, Scottish pharmacologist who invented Propranolol, synthesised Cimetidine, and received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988
• Robert Black, Queen's Counsel, Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh
• Norman Borlaug, American agricultural scientist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, father of the Green Revolution
• Sarah Broadie, philosopher specialising in metaphysics and ethics, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews
• John Campbell Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow
• Sir Samuel Brown, engineer and suspension bridge pioneer
• Sir Kenneth Calman, Scottish doctor, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland then England, Vice-chancellor of Durham University; Chancellor of Glasgow University
• Roger Cowley, physicist, Professorof Experimental Philosophy at Oxford
• Cyril Offord
• Tom Devine
• Kenneth Dover
• Professor Sir David Edward
• James Alfred Ewing, Scottish physicist and engineer, discoverer of hysteresis, Vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh
• Ian Fells
• John Fincham
• James David Forbes
• Alexander Gray, Scottish economist, translator and poet, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh
• William Michael Herbert Greaves
• John Currie Gunn
• James E. Talmage, Geologist, Chemist, prolific author (see Jesus the Christ (book)), President of the University of Utah, Apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Peter Higgs
• Right Reverend Richard Holloway, writer, broadcaster, Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church
• James Hutton, regarded as the founder of modern geology
• John Mackintosh Howie
• John Jamieson
• Fleeming Jenkin
• Mstislav Keldysh
• Cargill Gilston Knott
• Brian Lang, Scottish anthropologist, Vice-chancellor of the University of St Andrews
• Chris J. Leaver, Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford
• Sir Neil MacCormick, Regius Professor of Public Law at the University of Edinburgh and Vice-president of the Scottish National Party
• Neil Mackie, Scottish tenor, Head of Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music
• Aubrey Manning, English zoologist and broadcaster, Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh
• James Napier, Scottish writer
• John Playfair, Scottish mathematician and physicist, Professor of Mathematics and the Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh
• Lyon Playfair, 1st Baron Playfair
• Juda Hirsch Quastel
• John Randall, physicist
• Muir Russell
• Sir Walter Scott, romantic and historical novelist (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and others)
• Richard Sillitto
• John Sinclair, writer
• Adam Smith, classical economist; philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment
• Alexander McCall Smith, Rhodesia-born Scottish novelist (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Sunday Philosophy Club, 44 Scotland Street and others), Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh
• Christopher Smout
• Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, Scottish Academic who served as the Vice-Chancellor and Principle for the University of Edinburgh
• Peter Guthrie Tait
• George Thomson, Baron Thomson of Monifieth, Labour Party minister and European Commissioner
• William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Irish-Scottish mathematical physicist and engineer
• Ronald Pearson Tripp, paleontologist
• Colin Vincent
• Conrad Hal Waddington
• James Watt, Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the Industrial Revolution
• John Wishart (statistician)
• Charles W. J. Withers
• Ronald Selby Wright, minister of the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh
• Crispin Wright
• Hideki Yukawa, Japanese theoretical physicist who predicted the pion and K-capture, the first Japanese to win a Nobel Prize

• Royal Society of Edinburgh Website
• MacTutor: Royal Society of Edinburgh
• MacTutor: Mathematician fellows
• Notes on the Royal Society of Edinburgh from the Scholarly Societies project, University of Waterloo Library (includes information on the journals of the society)