Edinburgh Scotland United Kingdom - Today, we ask our panel to share their thoughts on "who is the most underrated figure in Scottish history?".
 
Lord Strathcona - Philanthropist, businessman, politician, nation builder.
 
In September 1906 two of the most influential Scottish emigrants to North America both found themselves in Aberdeen.
 
On a Wednesday, Andrew Carnegie was made an honorary doctor of laws by the University of which he was to become Rector five years later.
 
On a Thursday, Lord Strathcona, the University's Chancellor (and former Rector) hosted 2,500 guests at an extravagant banquet to celebrate the royal opening of the imposing new frontage to Marischal College earlier that day.
 
The menu included turtle soup, prepared from 90 turtles specially imported from the West Indies and sent north from London by train.
 
While Carnegie's memory still resonates on both sides of the Atlantic, Strathcona's fame has faded with the passage of time, at least on his native shores.
 
In his day, however, he was regarded as one of Canada's nation-builders, not only that country's pre-eminent businessman and financier, but also an astute politician, who, as plain Donald Smith, played a key role in the birth and development of the new Dominion.
 
A native of Forres who spent his early adulthood as a fur trader in the snows of Labrador, Smith rose through the ranks of the Hudson's Bay Company to become its Governor, showing an uncanny ability to manipulate networks and always be in the right place at the right time.
 
In the 1880s, along with his Dufftown-born cousin George Stephen (whose achievements are much less remembered), he bankrolled the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a feat which ensured Smith remained a Canadian icon well into the twentieth century.
 
In 1896, Smith came to London to take up the post of Canada's High Commissioner.
 
When he was ennobled a year later, his Scottish-Canadian identity was reflected in his choice of title, Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, and between then and his death in 1914 he built a mansion in Glencoe and purchased the island of Colonsay.
 
Like Carnegie, he disbursed millions of dollars in charitable donations and bequests, but while he has not been obliterated from public memory, he has, unlike his Dunfermline-born counterpart, not remained a household name in his homeland.
 
Professor Marjory Harper.

  His name has also disappeared here in Canada. This article has been abridged having other Scottish persons removed in favour of this important Canadian railway figure. Learn more in this article.