George Young

George Young (15 July 1777 – 8 May 1848) was a Scottish divine, scholar and flood geologist. Biography George Young was born in Kirknewton south-west of Edinburgh to John Young and his wife Jean. George was born without a left hand and this situation led his parents to educate him for the ministry. At the University of Edinburgh he distinguished himself in mathematics and natural philosophy. He was a favorite student of Professor John Playfair who was, at that time, becoming the great promoter of James Hutton's uniformitarian geology. After receiving high honors upon completion of his degree in 1796, he studied theology under George Lawson at Selkirk for five years, receiving at the end of this period a licence to preach from the Presbytery of Glasgow. In 1806 he became the pastor of the Cliff Street chapel in Whitby where he served for 42 years. He obtained an M.A. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1819. In 1826 he married Margaret Hunter. Though married for 20 years they had no children. Young could read and write Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian with some acquaintance with Arabic, Chaldean and Syriac, and he developed his own shorthand, which is still undecipherable. He helped establish Whitby Museum as the first secretary and a founding member of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. He procured fossil and mineral collections for the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.