Birkbeck, GEORGE, M.D., distinguished for the leading part he took in founding mechanics' institutions and in the education of the working-classes, was born at Settle, in Yorkshire, in 1776.
He commenced his medical studies at Leeds, and pursued them at Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance, among others, of Sydney Smith, Brougham, Jeffrey, and Horner. Appointed in 1799 to the chair of Natural Philosophy in the Andersonian Institution in Glasgow, he delivered his first free course of lectures to the working-classes in the following year. He took a leading part, along with Brougham, Bentham, Cobbett, and others, in the formation of the London Mechanics' Institute (1824)—the first of its kind in the kingdom. He was chosen its president for life, and it is called the Birkbeck Institution after him. In 1883-84 it was rebuilt on an adjoining site. Birkbeck died in London, 1st December 1841. See the Life by Godard (1884), and the article MECHANICS' INSTITUTES.