James A. Walker

James Alexander Walker (August 27, 1832 – October 21, 1901) was a Virginia lawyer, politician, and Confederate general during the American Civil War, later serving as a United States Congressman for two terms. He earned the nickname "Stonewall Jim" for his days as commander of the famed Stonewall Brigade.

Early life

Walker was born near Mount Meridian in Augusta County, Virginia on August 27, 1832. He attended private schools as a youth and attended the Virginia Military Institute. In 1852, while in then Major Thomas Jackson's Classroom (Jackson was both an officer and an instructor at the VMI) Cadet Walker perceived that Jackson was challenging his integrity. He, therefore, refused to follow a directive of Jackson to sit down and "stop talking" unless Jackson would also stop talking. Jackson excused Walker from class and charged him with disobeying an order. Cadet Walker, a cadet officer who would have graduated in only weeks, challenged Jackson to a duel to defend his honor. Walker was court-martialed and expelled from the institute for insubordination to an officer. Notably Walkers name was added to the rolls of graduates of the VMI several years later.

Alick Walker

Alick Donald Walker (26 October 1925 – 4 December 1999) was a British palaeontologist, after whom the Alwalkeria genus of dinosaur is named.

He was born in Skirpenbeck, near York and attended Pocklington School from 1936 to 1943. He began a degree course in engineering at Cambridge, but dropped out in 1944. In 1948 he returned to university after national service, reading Geology at the University of Bristol. On graduation, he join the research group of Professor Stanley Westoll at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, working on the fossil reptiles of the Late Triassic found in Elgin. He was appointed Lecturer in Geology in 1954, while working on his PhD.

The bony remains of the Elgin reptile fossils were poor, sometimes just indentations in rocks. Walker devised a new casting method to capture the anatomical information in these fossils, using PVC; many of the resulting casts are now in the National Museum of Scotland and the Natural History Museum. His early work was also notable for reclassifying and naming Eustreptospondylus.