Events from the year 1879 in Scotland.

• 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.^[1]
• 25 January – first service held in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh (Episcopal) 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.^[2]
• 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.^[3]
• 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.^[4]
• 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.

• 13 January – William Reid Dick, sculptor (died 1961 in England)
• 16 January – Jimmy Gillespie, rugby union player (died 1943)
• 27 March – Catherine Carswell, née Catherine Roxburgh Macfarlane, author (died 1946 in England)
• 29 March – Evelyn Vida Baxter, ornithologist (died 1959)^[5]
• 24 August – John Maclean, Marxist (died 1923)
• 13 September – Tommy Tait, international footballer (died 1942)
• 21 October – Willie Anderson, golfer (died 1910 in the United States)
• 23 October – John MacDougall Hay, Church of Scotland minister and novelist (died 1919)
• John Maxwell, film producer (died 1940 in England)
• Henry J. Watt, experimental psychologist (died 1925)

• 19 June – James Valentine, photographer (born 1815)
• 23 July – Charles Baillie, Lord Jerviswoode, advocate, judge and politician (born 1804)
• 29 October – John Blackwood, publisher (born 1818)
• 5 November – James Clerk Maxwell, theoretical physicist (born 1831; died of abdominal cancer in Cambridge)^[6]
• 23 November – Mark Napier, lawyer, sheriff, biographer and historical author (born 1798)

• 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.

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1879 in Ireland