The School is part of the University's College of Science and Engineering.

[2][3] Institutions and research groups based within the school include: The school is housed in the James Clerk Maxwell Building on the University's King's Buildings campus.

Catherine Heymans, the incumbent Astronomer Royal for Scotland, is a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy, and is the course organiser for the pre-honours Introductory Astrophysics course.

[5][6] Five winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics are associated with the University: Charles Glover Barkla (X-ray), Edward Appleton (Ionospheric Physics, Radar), Max Born (Quantum Mechanics), Igor Tamm (Particle Physics, Cherenkov Radiation, Phonon, Tokamak) and Peter Higgs (Higgs Boson, Higgs Mechanism, Higgs Field).

[7] Further notable physicists associated with the University include Thomas Young, Joseph Black, James Clerk Maxwell, David Brewster, Peter Guthrie Tait, Klaus Fuchs, C. G. Darwin, Nicholas Kemmer, David Olive, John Polkinghorne, Tom Kibble, Michael Cates, Fabiola Gianotti, Neil Turok.