Sir Edward Ronald Walker CBE (26 January 1907 – 28 November 1988) was an Australian diplomat and economist who served as Australia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Ambassador to Germany, Japan, and France.

[2] On account of his academic success, Walker was also awarded a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship in 1931 and entered St John’s College, Cambridge, studying for a doctorate in economics.

His doctoral dissertation, entitled "Australia in the World Depression", was supervised by Dennis Robertson and Arthur Cecil Pigou and at award in 1933 was the second PhD in economics at Cambridge.

[1] Impressed by his submissions, the Commonwealth Government sent Walker to Geneva as a delegate to the League of Nations in 1937 and on his return to Australia in 1938 he was appointed an economic adviser to the New South Wales Treasury.

[1] In office as Professor of Economics until 1946, in 1949 Walker was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) by Cambridge University in recognition of his prolific publications on the Australian war economy.

With the end of the war, Walker's government position was abolished, and was sent by the Commonwealth to be chief of the country programs branch of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Washington, DC.

He remained in Paris until 1950, when he returned to Australia to take up an appointment as an Executive member of the National Security Resources Board, which had been established following the outbreak of the Korean War.

Walker's next posting was back to Paris in 1959 as Ambassador to France, and while there was appointed again to represent Australia on the United Nations Economic and Social Council (1962–1964) and was elected president of that body in 1964.

[1] In August 1968 Walker was sent to Bonn to be Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, serving until June 1971, when he was sent back to Paris as Australia's first Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).