Since before the Industrial Revolution, Scots have been at the forefront of innovation and discovery across a wide range of spheres: the steam engine, the bicycle, tarmacadam roads, the telephone, television, the transistor, the motion picture, penicillin, electromagnetics, radar, insulin and calculus are only a few of the most significant products of Scottish ingenuity.

Today, the technologies may have changed but the creative spark still burns brightly, seen most prominently perhaps in the creation of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.

What made Scotland such a hotbed of creativity? It's difficult to point to any single factor although the Scots have always placed a high value on education. A prodigious work ethic, self-confidence and vision, and perhaps even the weather, may also have played a role. Yet even when they left their native country, Scots took that creative impetus with them and continued to distinguish themselves in their adopted countries.

Amazingly, for a country whose population has never been much in excess of 5 million, native Scots or those descended directly from them have been the recipients of some 11% of all the Nobel Prizes that have been awarded.

Whatever its source, it's clear that the ingenuity and inventiveness of the Scots have shaped the world in which we live today. Learn for yourself about the contribution great Scottish minds and inventions have made to the modern world and come home to the home of the Scottish Enlightenment and Innovation during 2009.

To find out about the other main themes for Homecoming, click on the links below:
Whisky
Golf
Ancestry
Robert Burns