Thomas Chalmers

Thomas Chalmers FRSE (17 March 1780 – 31 May 1847), was a Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist, and a leader of the Church of Scotland and of the Free Church of Scotland. He has been called "Scotland's greatest nineteenth-century churchman".

He served as Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1835–42.

The Dunedin, New Zealand town of Port Chalmers was named after Chalmers.

He was born at Anstruther in Fife, the son of John Chalmers, a merchant, and Elizabeth Hall.

At the age of eleven Chalmers was entered as a student at St Andrews, where he devoted himself almost exclusively to mathematics. In January 1799 he was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel by the St Andrews presbytery. In May 1803, after attending further courses of lectures in The University of Edinburgh, and acting as assistant to the professor of mathematics at St Andrews, he was ordained as minister of Kilmany, about 9 miles from the university town, where he continued to lecture. Kilmany was a small and predominantly agricultural parish, with a population under 800 in 1811.

Chalmers made an issue within St Andrews of the quality of mathematics teaching. It came to involve attacks on John Rotheram, the professor of natural philosophy. His mathematical lectures roused enthusiasm, but they were discontinued by order of the authorities. Chalmers then opened mathematical classes on his own account which attracted many students; at the same time he delivered a course of lectures on chemistry, and ministered to his parish at Kilmany. In 1805 he became a candidate for the vacant professorship of mathematics at The University of Edinburgh, but was unsuccessful.

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