George Forbes (1849–1936) was a Scottish electrical engineer, astronomer, explorer, author and inventor, some of whose inventions are still in use.

It overlooks the valley that in the 1950s would be flooded to create Loch Faskally and the hydroelectric scheme Forbes had proposed in the early 1900s.

In Pitlochry he returned to an earlier interest, from 1906 to 1930 delivering the David Elder lectures on Astronomy at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow.

For the 1874 Transit of Venus, Forbes was lead astronomer at the Hawaiʻi sub-station, part of the larger expedition to the Sandwich Islands led by Captain George Lyon Tupman.

Nearly 25 years later Forbes wrote up his overland odyssey – it was a journey that few seasoned western explorers had made, much less lone travellers in their mid-20s.

In his model the planet had a semi-major axis of ~300 AU, and he based locations from clustering of the aphelion distances of periodic comets.

[4] In 1882, Forbes became manager of the British Electric Light Company, manufacturers of carbon filaments and arc lamps.

In the obituary published in the Proceedings of the Philosophical Society, G. L. Addenbroke wrote that 'Forbes always referred to this work with much modesty, but there can be no doubt that, he presented to the World an idea of great engineering and commercial value, the importance of which he does not seem to have fully grasped at the time.'

Forbes was elected a Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the American Philosophical Society, and received an honorary LLD from St Andrews.

[8] Forbes did not marry and, in his last years, became something of a recluse, disillusioned that his obvious talents[citation needed] had earned him neither fame nor fortune.

A friend, the engineer Samuel Mavor, was more effusive: for him, Forbes "was the best type of Scottish gentleman, of tall and handsome appearance... he had a singularly attractive personality, fine character, a brilliant intellect and the manners of a courtier."