James Parkinson FGS (11 April 1755 – 21 December 1824)[1] was an English surgeon, apothecary, geologist, palaeontologist and political activist.

He is best known for his 1817 work An Essay on the Shaking Palsy,[2] in which he was the first to describe "paralysis agitans", a condition that would later be renamed Parkinson's disease by Jean-Martin Charcot.

He was the son of John Parkinson, an apothecary and surgeon practising in Hoxton Square in London,[3] and the oldest of five siblings, including his brother William and his sister Mary Sedgwick.

His early career was marked by his being involved in a variety of social and revolutionary causes, and some historians think he most likely was a strong proponent for the French Revolution.

[4] In 1794, his membership in the organisation led to him being examined under oath before William Pitt and the Privy Council to give evidence about a trumped-up plot to assassinate King George III.

He wrote several medical doctrines that revealed a zeal for the health and welfare of the people similar to that expressed in his political activism.

[14] In 1822, Parkinson published the shorter "Outlines of Oryctology: an Introduction to the Study of Fossil Organic Remains, especially of those found in British Strata".

Parkinson also contributed several papers to William Nicholson's "A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts", and in the first, second, and fifth volumes of the "Geological Society's Transactions".

The gathering included such great names as Sir Humphry Davy, Arthur Aikin, and George Bellas Greenough.

[15] Parkinson belonged to a school of thought, catastrophism, that concerned itself with the belief that the Earth's geology and biosphere were shaped by recent large-scale cataclysms.

He cited the Noachian deluge of Genesis as an example, and he firmly believed that creation and extinction were processes guided by the hand of God.

[16] Parkinson's life is commemorated with a stone tablet inside the church of St Leonard's, Shoreditch, where he was a member of the congregation; the exact site of his grave is not known and his body may lie in the crypt or in the churchyard.