Mary Hill Burton (1819–1909) was a Scottish social and educational reformer and the first woman governor of Heriot-Watt College.
[2] Mary Burton successfully campaigned for the Watt Institution to admit women students on equal terms to men in 1869, twenty-three years before legislation required Scottish universities to do so.
In her will she left "£100 to provide prizes for 'deserving students irrespective of age or sex' attending evening classes at Heriot-Watt College and £100 to the Edinburgh Women's Suffrage Society to campaign 'for the admission of women to sit as members of parliament, either at Westminster or in a Scottish Parliament'".
[6] Heriot-Watt University has honoured Mary Burton with a fund for female students studying STEM subjects launched in 2019 on the 200th anniversary of her birth.
[8] In 2022 Historic Environment Scotland placed a plaque to commemorate Burton at Liberton Bank House in Edinburgh.