John Walker (natural Historian) - Becoming A Naturalist

Becoming A Naturalist

During the 1760s he used his aristocratic connections to tour mines throughout the Lowlands and to assemble his own sizable mineralogical collection. By the mid 1760s, Walker was known as one of Scotland's leading lay naturalists. This motivated the Church of Scotland and the Board of Annexed Estates to send him on exploratory tours of the Highland and Hebrides in 1764 and 1771. These tours allowed him to make religious and ethnographic observations for the church and to take scientifically oriented notes on northern Scotland's minerals, plants, animals, and climate. During the 1770s Walker published articles in the Scots Magazine and the Philosophical Transactions. By the mid part of the decade, it became clear that Robert Ramsey, the University of Edinburgh's ailing Professor of Natural History, would soon need to be replaced. After securing the support of William Cullen, Lord Kames and several other politically savvy intellectuals, Walker competed against William Smellie, a well-respected natural historian and influential publisher, for the post. After much wrangling, Walker won the contest and was appointed in 1779. He held the position until his death in 1803.