Article ID: CBB001200784

From Precocious Fame to Mature Obscurity: David Walker (1837--1917) MD, LRSCIi, Surgeon and Naturalist to the Fox Arctic Expedition of 1857--59 (2012)

unapi

The Belfast-born David Walker was the 19-year-old surgeon and naturalist on the epic Fox Arctic Expedition (1857--59) that established the fate of Sir John Franklin's unsuccessful (1845) search for the North-West Passage. On return the crew were fêted as heroes and decorated, and shared in a £5000 government bounty: Walker was also received by the Queen and (in Ireland) by the Lord Lieutenant, was honoured by the principal British and Irish natural history societies and his portrait was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, London. This paper describes his adventurous life, including the Fox Expedition, which from 1862 was spent abroad and included time in the Cariboo gold fields, service in the United States Army, practice in a notorious Californian frontier town and, in later life, the comparative quiet of general and occupational medical practice in Portland, Oregon. Once a household name, his death went unrecorded in the British and Irish medical and lay press.

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Authors & Contributors
Marthe Fjellestad
Lunde, Darrin
Bessels, Emil
Birkenmajer, Krzysztof Ludwik
Morris, P. A.
Swain, Margaret Byrne
Concepts
Travel; exploration
Scientific expeditions
Biographies
Naturalists
Natural history
Botany
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
Places
Arctic regions
United States
Austria
Ireland
Antarctica
Belfast, Ireland
Institutions
International Polar Year (1882-1883)
Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk
National Geographic Society
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