John Young FRSE (1747–1820) was an 18th/19th century professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow from 1774 to 1820 (listing many figures of the Scottish Enlightenment amongst his students), and joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Captain Hamilton eulogises his scholarship and oratory, comparing his energetic sympathy with that of Burke (Cyril Thornton, chap.

iii., is a eulogy of Young, with whose reading of Greek and his enthusiasm over the value of a particle or the sublimity of a poetical passage the writer was deeply impressed.

Their eldest son, John (1781–1852), received the honorary degree of LLD from the University of Glasgow in 1810; was for a time chaplain of the East India Company; and died rector of Newdigate, Surrey, on 13 May 1852 (Gent.

Charles, the fourth son (1796–1822), a classical scholar of great promise, died at Glasgow on 17 December 1822 (Foster, Alumni Oxon.

Although Young's scholarship was mainly utilised in his class-room, he contributed some valuable notes to Dalziel's "Collectanea Græca Majora" (1820).

His metrical translation of the "Odes" of Tyrtæus, and his jeu d'esprit after Dr Johnson on Gray's "Elegy", are not of much account.

A half-length portrait of Young by Elizabeth Carmichael is today in the collection of the Hunterian Art Gallery.