scholarly journals The University of Edinburgh natural history class lists 1782–1800

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Eddy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Geographic Origin ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker ◽  
Reference Tool

In 1779 Revd Dr John Walker was appointed to be the University of Edinburgh's Professor of Natural History. Because of the institutional structure of the university, he took care to keep detailed class lists from 1782 to 1800. These are extant in the University of Edinburgh's Special Collections Department. As many of the students on the lists would go on to have a profound impact on the practice of nineteenth century natural history, I have compiled them into a table so that they can be used as a reference tool for those interested in the study of natural history in Edinburgh during the late eighteenth century. The table is arranged into columns that state the student's name, degree, year of attendance and geographic origin. To help the reader better understand the table, I have written a brief introductory essay that addresses Walker's organisation of the course and the types of students who attended the lectures. It also identifies the prominent role played by chemistry in Edinburgh's natural history community and discusses the foundation of the Student Natural History Society of Edinburgh.

scholarly journals Scottish chemistry, classification and the early mineralogical career of the ‘ingenious’ Rev. Dr John Walker (1746 to 1779)

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. EDDY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Early Career ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Chemical Characters ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker ◽  
William Cullen

The Rev. Dr John Walker was the Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803. Although his time in this position has been addressed by several studies, the previous thirty years that he spent ‘mineralizing’ have been virtually ignored. The situation is similar for many of the well-known mineralogists of the eighteenth century and there is a lack of studies that address how a mineralogist actually became a mineralogist. Using Walker's early career as a guide, this essay seeks to detail the making of an eighteenth-century Scottish mineralogist. The time frame under examination begins with Walker's matriculation at the University of Edinburgh in 1746 and it ends with his being appointed professor in 1779. The first section demonstrates that Walker's early mineralogical education at the Medical School and under William Cullen was closely linked to chemistry. The second section shows how he used chemical characters to classify minerals and to criticize the systems of Linnaeus, Da Costa, Wallerius and Cronstedt. Because Walker needed many ‘fossil’ samples to test the viability of his chemical mineralogy, the final section details how he used tours, patrons and correspondents to build his mineral collection.

scholarly journals Scottish chemistry, classification and the late mineralogical career of the ‘ingenious’ Professor John Walker (1779–1803)

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. EDDY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Edinburgh was the scene of several lively debates concerning the structure of the Earth. Though the ideas of groups like the ‘Wernerians’ and the ‘Huttonians’ have received due attention, little has been done to explicate the practice of mineralogy as it existed in the decades before the debates. To dig deeper into the eighteenth-century subject that formed the foundation of nineteenth-century geology in Scotland, this essay concentrates on Rev. Dr John Walker, the University of Edinburgh's Professor of Natural History (1779–1803). In pursuing this topic, it builds on an earlier BJHS article in which I excavated his early career as a mineralogist (1749–79). After first addressing a few historiographical points and the provenance of the student manuscripts upon which this study is based, I explain the method that Walker used to arrange minerals. I then move on to show that, like his younger attempts at mineralogical classification, his mature system was based predominantly upon chemistry. This sets the stage for the last half of the essay where I reconstruct the mineralogical system that Walker taught to the hundreds of students who sat in his natural history lectures from 1782 until 1800. I then conclude with a few observations about the relevance of his mineralogy to the scientific community of late eighteenth-century Edinburgh.

Transferrable Surveys: Natural History from the Hebrides to South India

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minakshi Menon
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
South India ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Statistical Survey ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker

In 1807 the English East India Company published a report by Dr Francis Buchanan (1762–1829), a Scottish medic in its employ. The report, titled A Journey from Madras, marked an important moment in colonial savoir faire – the emergence of the statistical survey as a form of natural historical knowledge-making in colonial India. What is not generally known is that Buchanan, who received his MD from the University of Edinburgh, had learnt the procedures he employed in his report in the natural history course taught there by the Rev. John Walker (1731–1803). This chapter seeks to explain why and how Walker's teaching travelled to India with Buchanan, and helped him justify British colonisation of south India.

The Legacy of Smith’s Jurisprudence in Late Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh

2019 ◽  
pp. 278-305
Author(s):  
John W. Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Universal History ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Law Professors

The chapter explores the development of law teaching in the University of Edinburgh in the later eighteenth-century, showing how Adam Smith's thinking promoted the development by law professors, all linked to Henry Dundas, of an empirical and historically oriented attitude to law and government in the teaching of Civil Law, the Law of Nature and Nations, Scots Law, and Universal History. This development had a major impact on Scottish thinking about law and government, not just among the lawyers. It raises the possibility of a route for the continuing impact of Enlightenment thought into the Nineteenth Century.

John Robertson Henderson (1863–1925): Scotland, India and anomuran taxonomy

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Christian College ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Marine Station ◽  
The University ◽  
Crustacean Taxonomy

John Robertson Henderson was born in Scotland and educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he qualified as a doctor. His interest in marine natural history was fostered at the Scottish Marine Station for Scientific Research at Granton (near Edinburgh) where his focus on anomuran crustaceans emerged, to the extent that he was eventually invited to compile the anomuran volume of the Challenger expedition reports. He left Scotland for India in autumn 1885 to take up the Chair of Zoology at Madras Christian College, shortly after its establishment. He continued working on crustacean taxonomy, producing substantial contributions to the field; returning to Scotland in retirement in 1919. The apparent absence of communication with Alfred William Alcock, a surgeon-naturalist with overlapping interests in India, is highlighted but not resolved.

scholarly journals 4. On some Congenital Deformities of the Human Skull

1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 444-449
Author(s):  
Wm. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Human Skull ◽  
Congenital Deformities ◽  
Premature Closure ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Living Person

1st, Scaphocephalus.—After making reference to his previous papers, more especially to that in which he had described several specimens of the scaphocephalic skull, in which he had discussed the influence exercised on the production of deformities of the cranium, by a premature closure or obliteration of the sutures, and to the recent memoirs of Professor von Düben of Stockholm,† and Dr John Thurnam, the author proceeded to relate two additional cases of scaphocephalus to those he had already recorded. He had met with one of these in the head of a living person, the other in a skull in the Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh.

scholarly journals XII.—Memoir of the Life and Writings of Robert Whytt, M.D., Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh from 1747 to 1766.

1862 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Seller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Busy Period ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Biographical Dictionary ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
At Home

It does not always happen that the memory of inquirers into nature, who have the merit or the fortune to strike first into a right path, is cherished as it deserves. This remark applies forcibly to the eminent person, whether regarded as a physiologist or as a physician, of whose life aud labours a brief memoir is now laid before the Society. The name of Robert Whytt was familiar to his contemporaries both at home and abroad. Increase of distance should hardly yet have dimmed its lustre. Yet, in proportion as the views which he initiated have expanded more and more in growing to maturity, the less and less is heard of their author. Biography—which never did Whytt great justice—begins already to put him aside. A few particulars of his life, with a catalogue of his works, have hitherto been common in books of that description, principally in those of Germany and France. In some newer French biographies his name has dropped out. But of a late Edinburgh Biographical Dictionary, extending to not a few volumes, while restricted to the lives of eminent Scotsmen, it will hardly obtain credit that an early luminary of the rising University, conspicuous among the European leaders of medical science during a busy period of the eighteenth century, should, amidst a cloud of mediocrity, be there sought for in vain.

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