Abstract
ON December 1, a century ago, Dr. George Birkbeck died in London and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His name to–day is recalled by Birkbeck College, London, which began its career as the London Mechanics' Institution with Birkbeck as its president. There were at one time hundreds of such institutions, and no doubt many of them exist to–day, but they may all be said to have sprung from the classes for mechanics started by Birkbeck in 1800 at the Anderson College of Glasgow, in which as a young man of twenty–four he held the chair of natural philosophy. Born in Settle, Yorkshire, on January 10, 1776, Birkbeck studied medicine at Leeds, London and Edinburgh, but he began his active career as a lecturer. In 1804 he set up in practice in the City of London and there became known to Hume, Grote, Brougham, and many other men of liberal ideas. In 1809 he assisted in founding the London Institution, in 1824 became president of the Mechanics' Institution, and was a projector of University College, *nd a supporter of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. He was, as his biographer J. G. Godard says, a “National Reformer”. In the prospectus of his class of 1800, he stated that it was “for persons engaged in the exercise of the mechanical arts, whose education in early life has precluded even the possibility of acquiring the smallest portion of scientific knowledge”. He lived to see knowledge brought within the reach of all.
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Dr. George Birkbeck and Technical Education. Nature 148, 659 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148659b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148659b0