Financier philanthropist physician
William Johnson Walker was born in Charlestown, Massachussets, the son of Maj. Timothy Walker, merchant and shrewd investor in real estate, and of Abigail (Johnson) Walker, lineal descendant of Edward Johnson, author of the Wonderworking Providence of Sion's Savior in New England.
From Phillips Academy at Andover, Walker went to Harvard, zealously studied Latin and geometry, and graduated in 1810. Immediately he began to study medicine and received the degree of M. D. from Harvard College in 1813. His subsequent training abroad, under Laennec, Corvisart, and Sir Astley Cooper, taught him to use the percussion method in diagnosing chest and abdominal ailments.
In 1816 he returned to Charlestown and began to practise medicine. Despite his imperious will and extreme independence, fundamental kindliness made his professional career eminently successful. He was appointed physician and surgeon to the State Prison and consulting surgeon to the Massachusetts General Hospital. Not the least of his accomplishments was the inspiring instruction of several young men who became famous doctors, among others, Morrill Wyman. As orator before the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1845 he presented An Essay on the Treatment of Compound and Complicated Fractures, published that same year, based on detailed records of his cases and on wide reading. Advocating extremely high professional standards, he emphasized the necessity of cleanliness in all operations and dressings. Shortly thereafter he retired from his practice to accumulate a large fortune in railroad and manufacturing stocks in order, as he later wrote to President Stearns of Amherst, "that I may contribute to education. " In 1861, Walker left his family for a boarding house in Newport, R. I, to devote the remainder of his life to well-planned philanthropy. In 1860 he had offered Harvard a sum of approximately $130, 000, for reforming the Medical School. His plan called for more laboratory and clinical work, at the expense of the prevalent deadening lecture system. The Harvard Corporation refused the gift because he demanded an entirely new faculty acceptable to himself. Thereupon Walker changed his will, originally in favor of Harvard exclusively, so as to divide his wealth, after leaving $260, 000 to his family and forty women friends, among Amherst, Tufts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Boston Society of Natural History. During the year 1861, Walker endowed at Amherst and Tufts professorships in mathematics, to be filled by young men of proved ability. At Amherst he provided for tutorial instruction in mathematics for classes chosen according to their ability and interest in the subject. The pedagogical theories of the Rev. Thomas Hill, added to his own medical experience, led him to urge that all students in geometry make their own figures and scales, teaching themselves by eye and hand, before the logical demonstrations. His practical and experimental aims in education were again emphasized in his ideas for field trips in connection with his gift to Williams College of a building for the study of natural history. The scientific and industrial outlook of the projected Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his regard for William Barton Rogers, its chief founder, caused him to provide, in 1863, about two-thirds of the fund of $100, 000 demanded in the charter before the Institute could begin operations. In the midst of his planning, Walker died suddenly of a self-diagnosed heart disease.
On April 16 he married Eliza Hurd.
