John Dawson (surgeon)

John Dawson
John Dawson (1734–1820). Portrait by William Whiston Barney.
Born	1734 Raygill, Garsdale, England
Died	19 September 1820 (aged 85–86) Sedbergh, England
Residence	England
Nationality	British
Fields	Surgeon and mathematician
Academic advisors	Edward Waring
Notable students	Adam Sedgwick James Inman George Butler Richard Sedgwick George Birkbeck John Haygarth Nicholas Conyngham Tindal Miles Bland Robert Willan Thomas Garnett Thomas Wilson John Bell
Known for	Calculating distance to the sun
Influences	Henry Bracken

John Dawson (1734 – 19 September 1820) was both a mathematician and surgeon. He was born at Raygill in Garsdale, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where "Dawson's Rock" celebrates the site of his early thinking about conic sections. After learning surgery from Henry Bracken of Lancaster, he worked as a surgeon in Sedbergh for a year, then went to study medicine at Edinburgh, walking 150 miles there with his savings stitched into his coat. Despite a very frugal lifestyle, he was unable to complete his degree, and had to return to Garsdale until he earned enough as a surgeon and as a private tutor in Mathematics at Sedbergh School to enable him to complete his MD from London in 1765.

Dawson published The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Briefly Invalidated in 1781, arguing against Joseph Priestley's doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, but his main skill was in Mathematics. He was a private tutor to many undergraduates at the University of Cambridge where his pupils included twelve Senior Wranglers between 1781 and 1807. Although he published little original work, he was skilled in correcting errors in the work of others. He studied the orbit of the moon and the dynamics of objects in central force fields, correcting serious errors in the calculations of the distance between the earth and the sun, and confirming an error in Newton's precession calculations.

He is notable as a mentor of Adam Sedgwick, James Inman, George Butler and many other public figures of the nineteenth century.

After a rudimentary education at the Revd Charles Udal's school in Garsdale, Dawson worked until he was about twenty as a shepherd on his father's freehold, developing an interest in mathematics in his spare time with the aid of books that he bought with the profits from stocking knitting or borrowed from his elder brother, who had become an excise officer. Despite being entirely self-taught he worked up his own system of conic sections and began to establish himself as a teacher of mathematics, often spending two or three months at a time in the houses of his pupils.