George Walker (mathematician)

In the autumn of 1749, being then about fifteen, he was admitted to the dissenting academy at Kendal under Caleb Rotherham; here he met his lifelong friend, John Manning (1730–1806).

Leaving Glasgow in 1754 without graduating, he did occasional preaching at Newcastle and Leeds, and injured his health by study; he recovered by a course of sea bathing.

In 1766 he declined an invitation to succeed Robert Andrews as minister of Platt Chapel, Manchester, but later in the year accepted a call (in succession to Joseph Wilkinson) from his uncle's former Presbyterian flock at Durham, and was ordained there in 1757.

Through Richard Price he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and recommended to William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne for the post of his librarian, afterwards filled by Joseph Priestley, but declined it (1772) owing to his approaching marriage.

Here he prepared for the press his treatise on the sphere, himself cutting out all the illustrative figures (twenty thousand, for an edition of five hundred copies).

Nottingham was a focus of political opinion, which Walker led both by special sermons and by drafting petitions and addresses sent forward by the town in favour of the independence of the United States and the advocacy of parliamentary and other reforms.

In 1794 he published his treatise on conic sections, while he was agitating against measures for the suppression of public opinion, which culminated in the Seditious Meetings Act 1795.

Walker remained for two years in the neighbourhood of Manchester, and continued to take an active part in its Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was elected president on the death of Thomas Percival.

According to Alexander Gordon in the Dictionary of National Biography, Walker's theology, a ‘tempered Arianism,’ played no part in his own compositions, but shows itself in omissions and alterations in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns,' Warrington, 1788.

Many of his speeches and political addresses are found in his ‘Life’ and collected ‘Essays.’ Besides the mathematical works already mentioned, he published: Posthumous were: He married in 1772 and was survived by his widow.