1903 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Edward VII
• Secretary for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – Lord Balfour of Burleigh to 9 October; then Andrew Murray

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Andrew Murray until October; then Charles Dickson
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Charles Dickson; then David Dundas

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Blair Balfour
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Kingsburgh

  Events

• January – East Fife Football Club is established.
• 12 February – the North British Locomotive Company of Springburn in Glasgow is formed by merger of Sharp, Stewart and Company, Neilson, Reid and Company and Dübs and Company. In April it receives its first new order for steam locomotives, from India.
• March – Ferguson Shipbuilders established at Port Glasgow.
• 3 March – the British Admiralty announces plans to build a naval base at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth.
• April – Norwegians begin whaling from Shetland.
• 14 April – Aberdeen Football Club is established.
• 10 June – the floral clock in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, begins operation, the world's first.
• 1 July – opening of Wick and Lybster Light Railway.
• 27 July – Glasgow St Enoch rail accident: 17 are killed when a Glasgow and South Western Railway train collides with the buffer stops at St Enoch railway station.
• 2 August – Pittencrieff Park is gifted to the people of Dunfermline by Andrew Carnegie.
• 24 August – opening of Ballachulish branch railway, including Connel Bridge over the Falls of Lora.
• October – opening of Willow Tearooms in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Catherine Cranston.
• 7 October – Perth Corporation Tramways take over the horse-drawn operations of the Perth and District Tramways.
• 31 October – opening of Hampden Park football ground in Glasgow.
• 9 December – opening of Glasgow East End Industrial Exhibition.
• Northern Lighthouse Board lighthouses: Construction of Scalasaig Light on Colonsay and navigation light on Lady Isle.

  Births

• 15 January – Hugh Fraser, retailer
• 3 February – Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton, peer and pioneering aviator, chief pilot of the first flight over Mount Everest in 1933
• 15 March – Charles Donaldson, Conservative politician
• 23 April – Ian Collins, tennis player, representing Great Britain in the Davis Cup
• 24 April – Joseph Macleod, poet, actor, playwright, theatre director, theatre historian and BBC newsreader
• 15 May – William MacTaggart, painter, known for his landscapes of East Lothian, France, Norway and elsewhere
• 17 June – William Vallance Douglas Hodge, mathematician, specifically a geometer
• 2 July – Alec Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, British Conservative politician, Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964
• 28 July – Keith Murray, academic and Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford
• 9 August – Emil Fischbacher, Protestant Christian missionary to Xinjiang, with the China Inland Mission
• 5 September – Harry Harvey Wood, literary and artistic figure, a founder of the Edinburgh International Festival
• 31 October – Ian Smith, international rugby player
• 19 December – Andrew Murray, Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1947 to 1951
• 29 December – George Elrick, bandleader and disc jockey
• Undated
• * Oliver Brown, nationalist political activist
• * Ben Humble, writer and climber
• * Hector MacAndrew, fiddler

  Deaths

• 3 February – David George Ritchie, philosopher
• 7 March – Hely Hutchinson Almond, rugby player and educationalist
• 17 May – John Ross, Australian drover and explorer
• 19 May – John Scott, shipbuilder
• 3 July – Matthew Holmes, steam locomotive designer
• 31 August – William Hastie, clergyman and theologian
• 18 September – Alexander Bain, philosopher and educationalist
• Undated – Thomas John MacLagan, Dundee doctor and pharmacologist

  The arts

• Hill House, Helensburgh, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh
• "Hector the Hero", a classic lament, composed by James Scott Skinner