1901 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria, Edward VII
• Secretary for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – Lord Balfour of Burleigh

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Andrew Murray
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Charles Dickson

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 21 March – The SY Discovery is formally launched in Dundee.
• 31 March – National census. 26% of the Scottish population live in Glasgow or Edinburgh.
• 1 April – the West Highland Railway's Mallaig Extension Railway, operated by the North British Railway, is opened throughout to Mallaig on the west coast.
• 16 May – TS King Edward is launched at William Denny and Brothers' shipyard in Dumbarton. The first commercial merchant vessel propelled by steam turbines, she enters excursion service on the Firth of Clyde on 1 July.
• 2 May – 4 November: Glasgow International Exhibition.
• 6 June – The Discovery leaves Dundee for London in preparation for its expedition south.
• 26 September – Ayr Corporation Tramways begin operation.
• The last resident family leaves the Shiant Isles for Harris.
• W. M. Gilbert's Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century introduces the term "Royal Mile".
• The Scottish Prohibition Party is founded.
• The carbonated soft drink Irn-Bru is first produced as Iron Brew by A.G. Barr in Falkirk.

  Births

• 13 February – Lewis Grassic Gibbon, writer
• 15 February – Murdo Macfarlane, Gaelic bard
• 3 April – Charles Finnigan, dental surgeon, Honorary Dental Surgeon to Queen Elizabeth
• 18 May – Isabella Gordon, carcinologist
• 29 June – Frieda Inescort, actress
• 17 August – Malcolm MacDonald, politician and diplomat
• 29 August – Anna Zinkeisen, artist
• 1 September – John Bannerman, Baron Bannerman of Kildonan, farmer, rugby union international and Liberal politician
• 22 September – George McKenzie, bantamweight boxer
• 24 October – Moultrie Kelsall, actor
• 1 December – Jane Gray, supercentenarian in Australia
• 11 December – Dave Halliday, footballer
• 13 December – Arthur Donaldson, leader of the Scottish National Party from 1960 to 1969
• Cezaro Rossetti, Esperanto writer

  Deaths

• 15 January – John Burnet, architect
• 12 February – John Burns, 1st Baron Inverclyde, ship owner, chairman of the Cunard Line
• 19 February – Duncan Cameron, owner of The Oban Times, inventor of the Waverley Pen,
• 8 April – James Chalmers, missionary, murdered on Goaribari Island
• 12 April – Richard Henry Brunton, "Father of Japanese lighthouses"
• 4 July – Peter Guthrie Tait, mathematical physicist
• 26 December – Sir Joseph Noel Paton, artist

  The arts

• George Douglas Brown's realist novel The House with the Green Shutters is published under the name George Douglas.
• John Davidson, poet, publishes The Testament of a Vivisector and The Testament of a Man Forbid