Scottish physician and classicist. Gregory was the son of the esteemed physician Dr John Gregory (1724-1773) and his wife Elizabeth Forbes (d. 1761). He was married two times, firstly to Mary Ross (d. 1784) and secondly (in 1796) to Isabella Macleod (1772-1847), with whom he had eleven children. 

He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, before going on to study at the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Oxford and Leyden. In 1776 he was appointed to the chair formerly held by his father at Edinburgh University, and he also began teaching clinical medicine at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In 1790 he succeeded Dr William Cullen as Head of the Edinburgh University School of Medicine. His reputation was so great, that in 1799 he was appointed First Physician to the King in Scotland to King George III. This commission was renewed by King George IV in 1820.

Gregory was president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1798 to 1801, but his publishing certain private proceedings of the college led to the suspension of his fellowship on May 13, 1809.

In 1820, Gregory had a riding accident, sustaining fractured ribs and hydrothorax. He never fully recovered, dying the next year. He lies buried, together with his wife and most of his children, next to the philosopher Adam Smith in Edinburgh's Canongate Kirkyard. For several decades after his death, he was known as the creator of "Gregory's Powder", an antacid, stomachic and cathartic which was composed of powdered rhubarb, ginger and magnesium oxide. The mixture was frequently used for stomach complaints until World War I. 

John Maclaurin was a Scottish advocate, judge and author. He was born in 1734, one of seven children of the noted mathematician Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746)1 and his wife Anne Stewart.2 

Maclaurin studied law at Edinburgh University, qualifying as an advocate in 1756. In 1762 he married Esther Cunningham (d. 1780). In 1781 he was elected Chief of the Clan McLaren, and in 1788 he was created a Senator of the College of Justice (a judge) as Lord Dreghorn, after his family home.

Blacklock was a Scottish poet and scholar. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother was the daughter of Mr Richard Rae, a cattle dealer. 

He lost his sight as a result of smallpox when he was just six months old. At the age of 12, he began writing poetry, and due to the influence of some of his friends, he soon gained some reputation in Scotland and abroad as a blind poet with some promise.

By 1759 he had completed his theological studies, and he was licensed as a preacher in Dumfries, where he acquired a considerable reputation as a pulpit orator. He was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright, but was objected to by the parishioners on account of his blindness, and gave up the presentation on receiving an annuity. He later removed to Edinburgh, where he became a tutor, and in 1767 he was made a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Marischal College in Aberdeen.

Blacklock's poems are mostly forgotten today, and his primary claim to fame is saving the life of poet Robert Burns by persuading him not to go to the West Indies, but to stay and publish his poems instead. The ship that Burns was supposed to travel with sank on its subsequent voyage with all lives lost. According to Corey Andrews in The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, "[Burns wrote, in an autobiographical letter to John Moore,] that 'a letter from Dr. Blacklock overthrew all my schemes by rousing by poetic ambition.' He confesses that 'the Doctor belonged to a set a Critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope'."

According to Chambers' Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1872), "[i]t has been said of Dr Blacklock that 'he never lost a friend, nor made a foe;' and perhaps no literary man ever passed through life so perfectly free from envious feeling, and so entirely respected and beloved. His conversation was lively and entertaining; his wit was acknowledged, but it had no tinge of malice; his temper was gentle, his feelings warm—intense; his whole character was one to which may be applied the epithet amiable, without any qualification."

Scottish judge, philosopher and noted eccentric. Burnett was the son of James Burnett of Monboddo and Elizabeth Forbes. He married Elizabeth Farquharson, with whom he had two daughters and a son.

Burnett was educated at Marischal College in Aberdeen, and at Edinburgh University before going to Groningen (in present-day Netherlands) to study for three years. After his return to Scotland, he passed his civil law examination in February 1737 and shortly after was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates.

In 1767 he succeeded Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton, as a Lord of Session (judge), assuming the title Lord Monboddo. 

Burnett was also a distinguished linguist, and his six-volume The Origin and Progress of Language (1773-1792) is considered the first major work in modern, comparative historical linguistics. He is even considered an early evolutionary theorist, although his theories about ouran-outangs (then used to refer to any kind of monkey) being a pre-cursor for man was widely and famously ridiculed.

Lord Monboddo is used as a character in Lillian de la Torre's The Monboddo Ape Boy, published in Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector, a collection of nine fictional short stories featuring Dr Johnson and James Boswell in a Holmes/Watson-like partnership.

Robert Cullen was the son of the noted Edinburgh physician, chemist and professor, William Cullen. He married Mary Russell (d.1818) but had no children.5

Cullen was educated at Edinburgh University and admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1764. He later became a judge, serving as one of the senators of the College of Justice (1796-9) and as a Lord of Justiciary (1799-1810).

In 1783, he co-founded, with his father and other prominent Edinburgh citizens, the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Robertson studied in Aberdeen and at Leyden University, from which he graduated in 1749. He continued on to Oxford University, where he studied Hebrew under Thomas Hunt (1696-1774), the Laudian Professor of Arabic. 

In 1751, he became Professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh University, supported by a written testimonial from his old Professor at Leyden, the philologist Albert Schultens, who had died the year before. He stayed on as Professor until 1792, a few years before his death. From 1763 until 1785 he was even the University Librarian.

He was a much-respected scholar in his own time, and he wrote such works as Grammatica linguae Hebraeae (1758), The resemblance of Jesus to Moses considered (1765), and Clavis Pentateuchi (1770)

Ferguson was the son of Rev. Adam Ferguson and his wife Mary Gordon. In 1767 Ferguson married Katharine Burnett (d. 1795) but had no children.

He received his education at Perth Grammar School, before going on to the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, from which he took his M.A. in 1742. In 1745 he became regimental chaplain to the 43rd Highland Regiment of Foot6, and he continued to be attached to the regiment until 1754 when he decided to leave the clergy to pursue more literary interests.

In 1757 he briefly succeeded David Hume as Keeper of the Advocates' Library, but soon after relinquished his office, when he became a tutor in the family of the Earl of Bute. In 1759 Ferguson was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh before, in 1764, becoming Professor of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy instead.

Ferguson's main claim to fame is arguably his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), which received critical acclaim and which was widely read even three decades after its initial publication. 

He resigned his position as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1785, but he continued with his literary endeavours, and in 1792 appeared, in two volumes, his Principles of Moral and Political Science.

In 1793, at the respectable old age of 70, Ferguson visited Germany and Italy, residing for a short time at Rome, and was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

Brown was the longtime Keeper of the Advocates Library in Edinburgh (1766-1794), which, in the 18th century, was the de facto national library of Scotland.

Brown was also an able archer, who, on May 26, 1781, during a practice session  "won eight successive ends, and nine successive shots in these eight ends, against the whole other of these shooters—an instance similar not known or remembered by any archer present to have happened before. This, it may be explained, occurred while shooting at rovers, and not in the butts, which, of course, makes the fact all the more wonderful. The gentleman who performed it was the Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, and was at one time employed in collecting materials for a History of Archery and the Royal Company, but did not proceed very far with it"  7