James Edward Tierney Aitchison MD LLD CIE FRSE FRS FRCSE (28 October 1835 – 30 September 1898) was a Scottish surgeon and botanist.

He worked as British Commissioner to Ladakh, India in 1872 and collected numerous specimens from the region and published catalogues of plants including those of economic interest.

[1] From 1853 his mother was living as a widow at 67 Great King Street, a huge Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh's Second New Town.

[2] James obtained his doctorate in medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1858, presenting his thesis 'Emphysema, one of the complications of parturition'[3] and then entered the Bengal Medical Service.

He suffered from a liver ailment and returned to England during which time he worked on a catalogue of the plants of Punjab and Sindh in 1869.