Brigadier-General Sir Robert Barker, 1st Baronet, FRS (1732 – 14 September 1789) was a British Army officer who served in the Seven Years' War and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1780.

[1] He went to India in 1749 and in 1757, during the Seven Years' War, commanded the artillery at the Capture of Chandannagar and at the Battle of Plassey.

[2][3] Two years later he returned to India to protect the Nawab wazir of Oudh Shuja-ud-Daula.

[5] However he exceeded his authority by committing the East India Company to guaranteeing a treaty and by confronting a possible Maratha Empire invasion.

[2] Besides the Thermometrical Observations published by the Royal Society, Barker also contributed Observations on a Voyage from Madras to England, 1774, and The Process of Making Ice in the East Indies to volume lxv., and an Account of an Observatory of the Brahmins at Benares to volume lxvii.