George Walker (Presbyterian)

George Walker (c. 1734–1807) was a versatile English Dissenter, known as a mathematician, theologian, Fellow of the Royal Society, and activist.

He was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in or around 1734. At ten years of age he was placed in the care of an uncle at Durham, Thomas Walker (died 10 November 1763), successively minister at Cockermouth, 1732, Durham, 1736, and Mill Hill Chapel at Leeds, 1748. He attended the Durham Grammar School, by then "a north-country public school of repute and wide influence", under Richard Dongworth. In the autumn of 1749, being then about fifteen, he was admitted to the dissenting academy at Kendal under Caleb Rotherham; here he met his lifelong friend, John Manning (1730–1806). On Rotherham's retirement (1751) he was for a short time under Hugh Moises at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In November 1751 he entered at Edinburgh University with Manning, where he studied mathematics under Matthew Stewart. He moved to Glasgow in 1752 for the sake of the divinity lectures of William Leechman, continued his mathematical studies under Robert Simson, and heard the lectures of Adam Smith, but found their private conversation more instructive. Among his classmates were Newcome Cappe, Nicholas Clayton, and John Millar, members with him of a college debating society.

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