1879 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – William Watson
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Macdonald

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Glencorse
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Moncreiff

  Events

• 4 January – Dundee-born Mormon missionary Hugh Findlay arrives in Shetland from the United States and on 31 March baptizes the islands' first two converts.
• 25 January – first service held in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh on completion of the nave.
• 1 April – Dundee Stock Exchange established.
• 6 June – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first ocean-going steamer to be built of mild steel, the SS Rotomahana, at Dumbarton.
• 31 July – the Caledonian Railway opens the original Glasgow Central station.
• 30 September – foundation stone of the Forth Bridge is laid on Inchgarvie.
• 2 October – William Denny and Brothers launch the world's first transatlantic steamer to be built of mild steel, the SS Buenos Ayrean, at Dumbarton. On 1 December she makes her maiden voyage out of Glasgow for South America.
• 28 December – the Tay Bridge disaster: the central part of the new Tay Bridge at Dundee collapses in a storm as a train passes over it, killing 78.
• Construction of Garnethill Synagogue, Glasgow, the oldest to survive in Scotland, begins.
• Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh moves to Lauriston Place.
• First Angus cattle society formed.

  Births

• 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor
• 16 January – Jimmy Gillespie, rugby union player
• 27 March – Catherine Carswell, née Catherine Roxburgh Macfarlane, author
• 29 March – Evelyn Vida Baxter, ornithologist
• 24 August – John Maclean, Marxist
• 13 September – Tommy Tait, international footballer
• 21 October – Willie Anderson, golfer
• 23 October – John MacDougall Hay, Church of Scotland minister and novelist
• John Maxwell, film producer
• Henry J. Watt, experimental psychologist

  Deaths

• 19 June – James Valentine, photographer
• 23 July – Charles Baillie, Lord Jerviswoode, advocate, judge and politician
• 29 October – John Blackwood, publisher
• 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, theoretical physicist
• 23 November – Mark Napier, lawyer, sheriff, biographer and historical author

  The arts

• 6 September – first publication of a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" in Chambers's Journal.
• Construction of Royalty Theatre, Glasgow, completed.