David Milne-Home was born David Milne on January 22, 1805, in Inveresk, East Lothian, Scotland.

He was a Scottish advocate, landowner, amateur geologist, and meteorologist. He studied law at the University of Edinburgh and became an advocate in 1826. In 1828, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and served as its secretary from 1840 to 1848 and as vice president from 1865 to 1888. He served as President of the Edinburgh Geological Society from 1874 to 1889. In 1852, when his wife inherited various properties – Wedderburn, Billie, and Paxton, they took the name of Milne-Home. He is remembered today chiefly for his work on earthquakes. As Secretary of the British Association of the Advancement of Science Earthquakes Committee from 1840 to around 1845, he published extensive reports into the earthquake swarm at Comrie, Perthshire. It was Milne-Home who coined the term “seismometer” to describe a machine for recording earthquakes (from the Greek σεισμός, seismós, a shaking or quake).

In 1832, he married Jean Foreman Home (1812–1876). He died on September 19, 1890, in Coldstream, Berwickshire, Scotland.