The grave of Prof John Walker, Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh

John Walker FRSE (1731–1803) was a Scottish minister and natural historian. He was Regius Professor of Natural history at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

from 1779 to 1803. He was joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790.

Overview

Walker was a protégé of the chemist

William Cullen William Cullen FRS FRSE FRCPE FPSG (; 15 April 17105 February 1790) was a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist, and professor at the Edinburgh Medical School. Cullen was a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment: He was ...

and a colleague of

Dugald Stewart Dugald Stewart (; 22 November 175311 June 1828) was a Scottish philosopher and mathematician. Today regarded as one of the most important figures of the later Scottish Enlightenment, he was renowned as a populariser of the work of Francis Hut ...

Joseph Black Joseph Black (16 April 1728 – 6 December 1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. He was Professor of Anatomy and Chemistry at the University of Glas ...

and several other Edinburgh professors who shaped the intellectual milieu of the Scottish Enlightenment. During his long career, he became a distinguished botanist, chemist, geologist, hydrologist, meteorologist, mineralogist, zoologist and economic historian, as well as being a minister in the Church of Scotland. Walker was one of the main scientific consultants of his day, serving as an agricultural, industrial or mining advisor to many influential Scottish landowners, including the judge advocate

Lord Kames Henry Home, Lord Kames (169627 December 1782) was a Scottish writer, philosopher, advocate, judge, and agricultural improver. A central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a founding member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, and act ...

, George III's prime minister

Lord Bute John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, (; 25 May 1713 – 10 March 1792), styled Lord Mount Stuart between 1713 and 1723, was a British nobleman who served as the 7th Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1762 to 1763 under George III. He was arguabl ...

, and Lord Hopetoun. Many of his students went on to become leading scientists in nineteenth century Scotland, England, Ireland, and America. He was a pioneer in introducing agricultural topics into a university curriculum. As a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter, Walker automatically became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783, going on to serve as Secretary of the Society's Physical section (1789–96). He was elected as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790.

Early life

He was born in Canongate, Edinburgh the eldest son of John Walker the rector of the Canongate Grammar School, and his wife, Eupham Morison. He was educated at his father's school. He matriculated at the

in 1746. Like many aspiring men in Scotland at this time, he took a divinity degree in 1749. He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of

Kirkcudbright Kirkcudbright ( ; sco, Kirkcoubrie; gd, Cille Chùithbeirt) is a town, parish and a Royal Burgh from 1455 in Kirkcudbrightshire, of which it is traditionally the county town, within Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The town lies southwest of ...

in 1754 but was not ordained into the

Church of Scotland The Church of Scotland ( sco, The Kirk o Scotland; gd, Eaglais na h-Alba) is the national church in Scotland. The Church of Scotland was principally shaped by John Knox, in the Reformation of 1560, when it split from the Catholic Church ...

until 1758, initially being minister of

Glencorse Glencorse is a parish of Midlothian, Scotland, lying south of Edinburgh.Gazetteer of Scotland, publ, by W & AK Johnston, Edinburgh, 1937. Article on Glencorse. Places are presented alphabetically It is bounded on the north-west by the former p ...

just south of

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

, moving to

Moffat Moffat ( gd, Mofad) is a burgh and parish in Dumfriesshire, now part of the Dumfries and Galloway local authority area in Scotland. It lies on the River Annan, with a population of around 2,500. It was a centre of the wool trade and a spa town. ...

in 1762 and to

Lochmaben Lochmaben ( Gaelic: ''Loch Mhabain'') is a small town and civil parish in Scotland, and site of a castle. It lies west of Lockerbie, in Dumfries and Galloway. By the 12th century the Bruce family had become the local landowners and, in the 14th ...

. He accepted the post of Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University in the same year and quickly found the two roles incompatible. In 1783 he returned to the church as minister of

Colinton Colinton ( gd, Baile Cholgain) is a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland situated south-west of the city centre. Up until the late 18th century it appears on maps as Collington. It is bordered by Dreghorn to the south and Craiglockhart to the north ...

, a parish in south-west Edinburgh. Held in high esteem he was elected

Moderator of the General Assembly The moderator of the General Assembly is the chairperson of a General Assembly, the highest court of a Presbyterian or Reformed church. Kirk sessions and presbyteries may also style the chairperson as moderator. The Oxford Dictionary states t ...

in 1790. He lived in Colinton manse from 1783 to 1803. He became blind around 1800 but continued to preach until death. However, his religious duties did not stop him from pursuing scientific subjects in his spare time. While at university took natural philosophy courses and collected natural history specimens in and around the Lothians. During the 1750s he continued to pursue scientific subjects by studying chemistry under Professor William Cullen and by joining Edinburgh's Philosophical Society. He distinguished himself not only by winning awards from the Society but also by publishing an article in the 1757 edition of the ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London''. Under Cullen's patronage, Walker further distinguished himself as a chemist and a mineralogist and this led him to function as a scientific advisor for

, Lord Hopetoun, Lord Cathcart, and Judge Advocate

Becoming a naturalist

During the 1760s he used his aristocratic connections to tour mines throughout the

Lowlands Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland. Definitions Upland and lowland are portions of p ...

and to assemble his own sizeable mineralogical collection. By the mid-1760s, Walker was known as one of Scotland's leading lay naturalists. This motivated the Church of Scotland and the Board of Annexed Estates to send him on exploratory tours of the

Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

and

Hebrides The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebr ...

in 1764 and 1771. These tours allowed him to make religious and ethnographic observations for the church and to take scientifically oriented notes on northern Scotland's minerals, plants, animals, and climate. In his 1764 tour, while on visit to the island of Jura (Deer Island), Walker may have made the first detailed description of the

Lyme disease Lyme disease, also known as Lyme borreliosis, is a vector-borne disease caused by the ''Borrelia'' bacterium, which is spread by ticks in the genus ''Ixodes''. The most common sign of infection is an expanding red rash, known as erythema migran ...

. He gives a good description both of the symptoms (with "exquisite pain nthe interior parts of the limbs") and of the tick vector itself, which he describes as a "worm" with a body which is "of a reddish colour and of a compressed shape with a row of feet on each side" that "penetrates the skin". It was also during this period that he collected samples of the mineral which came to be known as strontianite from its type locality, thus setting in process the identification and analysis of the new alkaline earth Strontium. During the 1770s Walker published articles in the ''Scots Magazine'' and the ''Philosophical Transactions''. By the mid part of the decade, it became clear that Robert Ramsey, the University of Edinburgh's ailing Professor of Natural History, would soon need to be replaced. After securing the support of

, Lord Kames and several other politically savvy intellectuals, Walker competed against William Smellie, a well-respected natural historian and influential publisher, for the post. After much wrangling, Walker won the contest and was appointed in 1779. He held the position until his death in 1803.

Later life

Walker's natural history lectures spanned the academic year and were divided into two sections. The first half of the year he gave his 'Hippocratean' lectures, that is,

meteorology Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did no ...

hydrology Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is call ...

and geology. The second half of the year was devoted to the three kingdoms of nature: minerals, plants, and animals. During the 1760s, he had accepted Linnaeus' binomial classification system and during his university tenure he readily applied it to botany. However, he did not agree with

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

' classification of minerals and animals and therefore he developed his own unique system for both of these subjects. As shown b
Matthew Daniel Eddy
Walker developed a sophisticated theory of the earth based on evidence gathered from geochemistry and human history. Throughout his entire career he kept his ties with the

and in 1790 he was elected to be Moderator, its highest position. Sometime in the late 1790s he began to lose his sight and several of his lectures were taken over by Dr Robert Jameson, a physician and former student who had also studied in mainland Europe. By the time that he died in 1803, Walker had taught well over 800 students, some of whom would go on to have a significant impact on 19th-century natural history. Some of these names include Rev. Prof. John Playfair,

Sir James Edward Smith __NOTOC__ Sir James Edward Smith (2 December 1759 – 17 March 1828) was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society. Early life and education Smith was born in Norwich in 1759, the son of a wealthy wool merchant. He displayed a ...

, Sir James Hall, Mungo Park, Robert Waring Darwin, Robert Brown,

Thomas Beddoes Thomas Beddoes (13 April 176024 December 1808) was an English physician and scientific writer. He was born in Shifnal, Shropshire and died in Bristol fifteen years after opening his medical practice there. He was a reforming practitioner and t ...

, Thomas Charles Hope, and Samuel Latham Mitchell. He died at his Edinburgh home at 1 St John StreetEdinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1800-1801 on the Canongate on 31 December 1803, and is buried in

Canongate Kirk The Kirk of the Canongate, or Canongate Kirk, serves the Parish of Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town, in Scotland. It is a congregation of the Church of Scotland. The parish includes the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Scottish Parliament. It i ...

yard on the Royal Mile in

, just east of the church building.

Family

In 1789 he married Jane Wallace Wauchope.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, John 1731 births 1803 deaths 18th-century Ministers of the Church of Scotland 18th-century British zoologists Clergy from Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Members of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Burials at the Canongate Kirkyard People of the Scottish Enlightenment Scottish mineralogists Scottish economics writers Scottish agronomists Scottish chemists Scottish botanists Scottish curators Scottish geologists Scottish hydrographers Scottish meteorologists Scottish naturalists Scottish surveyors Scottish zoologists 18th-century Scottish educators Blind people from Scotland Scientists from Edinburgh