Robert Adamson was a Scottish chemist and pioneer photographer at Hill & Adamson. He is best known for his pioneering photographic work with David Octavius Hill and producing some 2500 calotypes, mostly portraits, within 5 years after being hired by Hill in 1843.

Hill & Adamson was the first photography studio in Scotland, set up by painter David Octavius Hill and engineer Robert Adamson in 1843. During their brief partnership that ended with Adamson's untimely death, Hill & Adamson produced "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography." Watercolorist John Harden, on first seeing Hill & Adamson's calotypes in November 1843, wrote, "The pictures produced are as Rembrandt's but improved, so like his style & the oldest & finest masters that doubtless a great progress in Portrait painting & effect must be the consequence."