George Lawson was born on October 12, 1827, in Forgan, Fife, Scotland.

He was a Scottish-Canadian botanist, author, educator, and civil servant. After a private education, he was apprenticed to a solicitor in Dundee, but he continued his scientific self-education at the Watt Institution Library and helped found the Dundee Naturalists’ Association. In the 1850s, he studied natural and physical sciences in Edinburgh. He served as assistant secretary and curator to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh and assistant librarian of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1858, he was appointed the Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. After the Botanical Society of Canada was founded in 1860, he helped create one of Canada's first botanical gardens. In 1862, he received an honorary degree of LL.D. from McGill University. In 1868, he became Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lawson also lectured at Halifax Medical College, and in 1877, he helped organize the Technological Institute of Halifax. He served as secretary to the Central Board of Agriculture of Nova Scotia (1864-1885) and edited the Journal of Agriculture (1865-1885). He was a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada and its president from 1887 to 1888. He is considered the "Father of Canadian botany".

In 1850, he married Lucy Stapley (–1871) and in 1876, he remarried Carolin Mathilde Jordan. He died on November 10, 1895, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.