Scots show more than fair share of genius

• Top row from left: James Watt, John Napier, Alex Fleming and Lord Kelvin

Bottom row from left: James Watson-Watt, James Clerk Maxwell, William Hunter and John Hunter

A new television series that chronicles the cerebral fireworks of the UK's greatest minds has served to highlight Scotland's unique contribution.

Scots scientists, surgeons and physicists make up eight of the programme's 23 featured "geniuses", or more than a third, despite the fact that Scotland accounts for just 10 per cent of the population of the UK.

The five-part documentary series, The Genius of Britain, which began on Channel 4 on Sunday night, uses the leading minds of today such as Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough to illuminate the great thinkers of the nation's past.

• List of eight Scottish geniuses

Among the Scots featured are James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine; Robert Watson-Watt, who invented radar and was later caught speeding with a device he helped devise; and Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin.

Yesterday, Rachel Bell, the programme's producer said: "It was apparent that Scotland has always punched above its weight in terms of scientific discovery and Britain has also done so when compared to the rest of the world.

"The reason behind this is early industrialisation and the fine history of education.

"Among the Scots, what I was pleased to discover was that they were rarely posh and instead came from more humble backgrounds but combined education and hard work with that spark of genius."

Professor Stephen Hawking features in the documentary praising the work of his hero, James Clerk Maxwell, the theoretical physicist who was born in Edinburgh in 1831 and who laid the groundwork for telecommunications and computers.

Maxwell was recently voted third greatest physicist of all time, behind Newton and Einstein, who himself described Maxwell's work as the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton".

Richard Dougall, a trustee from the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation said that there was now a growing interest among the general public on his achievements.

"A statue of James Clerk Maxwell was recently unveiled in Edinburgh and there is a lot of interest in his work.

"I think what set him and the other Scots geniuses apart was their ability to keep asking questions, and to later answer them with great clarity."

The programmes also focus on the Second World War and the immense contributions that British scientists and engineers made towards the Allied victory over the Nazis.

Richard Dawkins discusses his admiration for Alan Turing, who in devising a machine capable of the billions of calculations necessary to decrypt the German's Enigma code, helped to invent the modern computer.

After being arrested for homosexuality, illegal in the 1950s, he later killed himself by biting into an apple he had deliberately poisoned.

There are those who believe that the Apple logo – an apple with a chunk bitten out – is in tribute to the father of modern computing.

Among the other Scots featured in the series is William Thomson, who as Lord Kelvin became the first scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. Although born in Northern Ireland, he spent his career at Glasgow University where he did a mathematical analysis of electricity and developed the basis of "absolute zero".

Among the other British geniuses are Isaac Newton, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Rosalind Franklin – who made breakthroughs in understanding DNA structure – the only woman on the list.

On the list

Issac Newton – described gravity

Robert Boyle -chemist

Robert Hooke – coined "cell" for the basic unit of life.

Edmund Halley – computed comet's orbit.

James Watt

Joseph Priestley – discovered oxygen

William Hunter

Michael Faraday – discovered electromagnetic induction.

Lord Kelvin

James Clark Maxwell

Alan Turing - computer science.

John Napier

Charles Babbage – mechanical engineer

Robert Watson-Watt– invented RADAR

Alexander Fleming

Frank Whittle – invented the jet engine.

Rosalind Franklin – X-rays

Watson and Crick – joint discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule

Fred Hoyle – astronomer,