A nation shaped by rain: exhibition celebrates Scotland’s wettest obsession

Happily for tourists fleeing a summer downpour, the rain exhibition is in a room only a few steps from the National Library of Scotland’s front door. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

It seems fitting that, 250 years ago, one of Scotland’s foremost scientists took a close interest in what is arguably the country’s most famous feature: rain

James Hutton, celebrated by Scots as the father of modern geology, went so far as to write a formula for “a theory of rain”. In 1784, he sketched out the key principles for the “condensation of aqueous vapour contained in the air”.