George Arnott Walker Arnott (Edinburgh, 6 februari 1799 - Glasgow, 17 juni 1868) was een Schots botanicus.
George A. Walker Arnott was Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, during the mid-1800s, and made numerous significant contributions to that field. Toward the end of his life, he focused his energies on studying diatoms. Arnott left behind his imprint in the naming of countless species of plants and diatoms, and specimens of both plants and diatoms that can still be found in museums throughout the world. The National Botanic Garden of Belgium currently holds about 2000 tubes of Arnott’s diatom gatherings. The Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh also holds an extensive collection of Arnott’s diatom slides and gatherings. Julien Deby reported in 1891 that his collection contained 1100 diatom slides that had been prepared by Arnott, plus 300 tubes of unmounted, cleaned material. Thomas Rylands and Robert Greville also owned a number of Arnott’s microscope slides. Deby’s, Rylands’ and Greville’s collections, including their Arnott slides, were later acquired by the British Museum. Other early diatom biologists, such as Arthur S. Donkin, also wrote of owning slides by Arnott. Thomas Curties donated 50 diatom slides, including several mounted by Arnott, to the Quekett Microscopical Club in 1871. Doubtless, many other friends and colleagues acquired slides made by Arnott, which have since found their ways into the cabinets of diatom biologists and slide collectors (Figure 1).
