He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School (1805–12) and St. John's College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship.

He gained the Newdigate prize in 1813, and in 1816 took a double second class in classics and mathematics.

He became physician to the Middlesex Hospital in 1824, and in 1831, on the foundation of the medical faculty of King's College, London, he was elected the first professor of medicine there.

Hawkins was for many years connected with the College of Physicians, in which he held various offices, and gave the Gulstonian (1826), Croonian (1827–8–9), and Lumleian (1832–4–40–1) lectures, as well as the Harveian oration (1848).

But his most important services to the college were rendered as registrar, which office he held for twenty-nine years from 30 September 1829, only resigning it to become registrar of the General Medical Council on its foundation in 1858, in which capacity he remained till 1876.

He wrote also ‘Lectures on Rheumatism and some Diseases of the Heart and other Internal Organs,’ London, 1826, 8vo.