Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley
Woodburytype print of Huxley (1880 or earlier)
Born	4 May 1825(1825-05-04) Ealing, Middlesex
Died	29 June 1895(1895-06-29) (aged 70) Eastbourne, Sussex
Residence	London
Nationality	British
Fields	Zoology; Comparative anatomy
Institutions	Royal Navy, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal School of Mines, Royal Institution University of London
Alma mater	Sydenham College London Charing Cross Hospital
Known for	Evolution, Science education, Agnosticism
Influences	Thomas Wharton Jones Edward Forbes, Charles Darwin
Influenced	Michael Foster, Patrick Geddes Henry Fairfield Osborn H.G. Wells, E. Ray Lankester

Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.^[1]

Huxley's famous 1860 debate with Samuel Wilberforce was a key moment in the wider acceptance of evolution, and in his own career. Huxley had been planning to leave Oxford on the previous day, but, after an encounter with Robert Chambers, the author of Vestiges, he changed his mind and decided to join the debate. Wilberforce was coached by Richard Owen, against whom Huxley also debated whether humans were closely related to apes.

Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. He was instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, and fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition.

Huxley coined the term 'agnostic' to describe his own views on theology, a term whose use has continued to the present day (see Thomas Henry Huxley and agnosticism).^[2]

Huxley had little formal schooling and taught himself almost everything he knew. Remarkably, he became perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of the latter 19th century.^[3] He worked on invertebrates, clarifying relationships between groups previously little understood. Later, he worked on vertebrates, especially on the relationship between apes and humans. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs, a theory widely accepted today.

The tendency has been for this fine anatomical work to be overshadowed by his energetic and controversial activity in favour of evolution, and by his extensive public work on scientific education, both of which had significant effects on society in Britain and elsewhere.^[4]^[5]

Biography

Early life

Thomas Henry Huxley was born in Ealing, then a village in Middlesex. He was the second youngest of eight children of George Huxley and Rachel Withers. Like some other British scientists of the nineteenth century such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Huxley was brought up in a literate middle-class family which had fallen on hard times. His father was a mathematics teacher at Ealing School until it closed,^[6] putting the family into financial difficulties. As a result, Thomas left school at age 10, after only two years of formal schooling.

Despite this unenviable start, Huxley was determined to educate himself. He became one of the great autodidacts of the nineteenth century. At first he read Thomas Carlyle, James Hutton's Geology, Hamilton's Logic. In his teens he taught himself German, eventually becoming fluent and used by Charles Darwin as a translator of scientific material in German. He learned Latin and enough Greek to read Aristotle in the original.

Huxley, aged 21

Later on, as a young adult, he made himself an expert first on invertebrates, and later on vertebrates, all self-taught. He was skilled in drawing and did many of the illustrations for his publications on marine invertebrates. In his later debates and writing on science and religion his grasp of theology was better than most of his clerical opponents. So, a boy who left school at ten became one of the most knowledgeable men in Britain.^[7]^[8]

He was apprenticed for short periods to several medical practitioners: at 13 to his brother-in-law John Cooke in Coventry, who passed him on to Thomas Chandler, notable for his experiments using mesmerism for medical purposes. Chandler's practice was in London's Rotherhithe amidst the squalor endured by the Dickensian poor. Here Thomas would have seen poverty, crime and rampant disease at its worst.^[9] Next, another brother-in-law took him on: John Salt, his eldest sister's husband. Now 16, Huxley entered Sydenham College (behind University College Hospital), a cut-price anatomy school whose founder Marshall Hall discovered the reflex arc. All this time Huxley continued his program of reading, which more than made up for his lack of formal schooling.

A year later, buoyed by excellent results and a silver medal prize in the Apothecaries' yearly competition, Huxley was admitted to study at Charing Cross Hospital, where he obtained a small scholarship. At Charing Cross, he was taught by the Scot, Thomas Wharton Jones, Professor of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery at University College London. Jones had been Robert Knox's assistant when Knox bought cadavers from Burke and Hare.^[10] The young Wharton Jones, who acted as go-between, was exonerated of crime, but thought it best to leave Scotland. He was a fine teacher, up-to-date in physiology and also an ophthalmic surgeon. In 1845, under Wharton Jones' guidance, Huxley published his first scientific paper demonstrating the existence of a hitherto unrecognized layer in the inner sheath of hairs, a layer that has been known since as Huxley's layer. No doubt remembering this, and of course knowing his merit, later in life Huxley organised a pension for his old tutor.

At twenty he passed his First M.B. examination at the University of London, winning the gold medal for anatomy and physiology. However, he did not present himself for the final (2nd M.B.) exams and consequently did not qualify with a university degree. His apprenticeships and exam results formed a sufficient basis for his application to the Royal Navy.^[7]^[8]

Voyage of the Rattlesnake

Aged 20, Huxley was too young to apply to the Royal College of Surgeons for a licence to practice, yet he was 'deep in debt'.^[11] So, at a friend's suggestion, he applied for an appointment in the Royal Navy. He had references on character and certificates showing the time spent on his apprenticeship and on requirements such as dissection and pharmacy. Sir William Burnett, the Physician General of the Navy, interviewed him and arranged for the College of Surgeons to test his competence (by means of a viva voce).

HMS Rattlesnake
by ship's artist Oswald Brierly

Finally Huxley was made Assistant Surgeon ('surgeon's mate') to HMS Rattlesnake, about to start for a voyage of discovery and surveying to New Guinea and Australia. The Rattlesnake left England on 3 December 1846 and, once they had arrived in the southern hemisphere, Huxley devoted his time to the study of marine invertebrates.^[12] He began to send details of his discoveries back to England, where publication was arranged by Edward Forbes FRS (who had also been a pupil of Knox). Both before and after the voyage Forbes was something of a mentor to Huxley.

Huxley's paper "On the anatomy and the affinities of the family of Medusae" was published in 1849 by the Royal Society in its Philosophical Transactions. Huxley united the Hydroid and Sertularian polyps with the Medusae to form a class to which he subsequently gave the name of Hydrozoa. The connection he made was that all the members of the class consisted of two cell layers, enclosing a central cavity or stomach. This is characteristic of the phylum now called the Cnidaria. He compared this feature to the serous and mucous structures of embryos of higher animals. When at last he got a grant from the Royal Society for the printing of plates, Huxley was able to summarise this work in The Oceanic Hydrozoa, published by the Ray Society in 1859.^[13]^[14]

Australian woman:
Pencil drawing by Huxley

The value of Huxley's work was recognized and, on returning to England in 1850, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In the following year, at the age of twenty-six, he not only received the Royal Society Medal but was also elected to the Council. He met Joseph Dalton Hooker and John Tyndall,^[15] who remained his lifelong friends. The Admiralty retained him as a nominal assistant-surgeon, so he might work on the specimens he collected and the observations he made during the voyage of the Rattlesnake. He solved the problem of Appendicularia, whose place in the animal kingdom Johannes Peter Müller had found himself wholly unable to assign. It and the Ascidians are both, as Huxley showed, tunicates, today regarded as a sister group to the vertebrates in the phylum Chordata.^[16] Other papers on the morphology of the cephalopods and on brachiopods and rotifers are also noteworthy.^[7]^[8]^[17] The Rattlesnake's official naturalist, John MacGillivray, did some work on botany, and proved surprisingly good at notating Australian aboriginal languages. He wrote up the voyage in the standard Victorian two volume format.^[18]

Later life

Huxley effectively resigned from the navy (by refusing to return to active service) and, in July 1854, he became Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines and naturalist to the British Geological Survey in the following year. In addition, he was Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution 1855–58 and 1865–67; Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons 1863–69; President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 1869–1870; and, later, President of the Royal Society 1883–85; and Inspector of Fisheries 1881–85.^[8]

The thirty-one years during which Huxley occupied the chair of natural history at the Royal School of Mines included work on vertebrate palaeontology and on many projects to advance the place of science in British life. Huxley retired in 1885, after a bout of depressive illness which started in 1884. He resigned the Presidency of the Royal Society in mid-term, the Inspectorship of Fisheries, and his chair (as soon as he decently could) and took six month's leave. His pension was a fairly handsome £1500 a year.

In 1890, he moved from London to Eastbourne where he edited the nine volumes of his Collected Essays. In 1894 he heard of Eugene Dubois' discovery in Java of the remains of Pithecanthropus erectus (now known as Homo erectus). Finally, in 1895, he died of a heart attack (after contracting influenza and pneumonia), and was buried in North London at St Marylebone. This small family plot had been purchased upon the death of his beloved youngest son Noel, who died of scarlet fever in 1860; Huxley's wife is also buried there. No invitations were sent out, but two hundred people turned up for the ceremony; they included Hooker, Flower, Foster, Lankester, Joseph Lister and, apparently, Henry James.^[19]

Public duties and awards

From 1870 onwards, Huxley was to some extent drawn away from scientific research by the claims of public duty. He served on eight Royal Commissions, from 1862 to 1884. From 1871–80 he was a Secretary of the Royal Society and from 1883–85 he was President. He was President of the Geological Society from 1868–70. In 1870, he was President of the British Association at Liverpool and, in the same year was elected a member of the newly constituted London School Board. He was the leading person amongst those who reformed the Royal Society, persuaded government about science, and established scientific education in British schools and universities.^[20] Before him, science was mostly a gentleman's occupation; after him, science was a profession.^[21]

He was awarded the highest honours then open to British men of science. The Royal Society, who had elected him as Fellow when he was 25 (1851), awarded him the Royal Medal the next year (1852), a year before Charles Darwin got the same award. He was the youngest biologist to receive such recognition. Then later in life came the Copley Medal in 1888 and the Darwin Medal in 1894; the Geological Society awarded him the Wollaston Medal in 1876; the Linnean Society awarded him the Linnean Medal in 1890. There were many other elections and appointments to eminent scientific bodies; these and his many academic awards are listed in the Life and Letters. He turned down many other appointments, notably the Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford and the Mastership of University College, Oxford.^[22]

Huxley
by Bassano c1883

In 1873 the King of Sweden made Huxley, Hooker and Tyndall Knights of the Order of the North Star: they could wear the insignia but not use the title in Britain.^[23] Huxley collected many honorary memberships of foreign societies, academic awards and honorary doctorates from Britain and Germany.

As recognition of his many public services he was given a pension by the state, and was appointed Privy Councillor in 1892.

There was so much achievement in his life that it seems extraordinary that he was given no award by the British state until late in life. In this he did better than Darwin, who got no award of any kind from the state. (Darwin's proposed knighthood was vetoed by ecclesiastical advisors, including Wilberforce)^[24] Perhaps Huxley had commented too often on his dislike of honours, or perhaps his many assaults on the traditional beliefs of organised religion made enemies in the establishment—he had vigorous debates in print with Prime Ministers Disraeli, Gladstone and Arthur Balfour, and his relationship with Lord Salisbury was less than tranquil.^[8]^[25]

Huxley was for about thirty years evolution's most effective advocate, and for some Huxley was "the premier advocate of science in the nineteenth century [for] the whole English-speaking world".^[26]

Though he had many admirers and disciples, his retirement and later death left British zoology somewhat bereft of leadership. He had, directly or indirectly, guided the careers and appointments of the next generation, but none were of his stature. The loss of Francis Balfour in 1882, climbing the Alps just after he was appointed to a chair at Cambridge, was a tragedy. Huxley thought he was "the only man who can carry out my work": the deaths of Balfour and W.K. Clifford were "the greatest losses to science in our time".^[8]

Vertebrate palaeontology

The first half of Huxley's career as a palaeontologist is marked by a rather strange predilection for 'persistent types', in which he seemed to argue that evolutionary advancement (in the sense of major new groups of animals and plants) was rare or absent in the Phanerozoic. In the same vein, he tended to push the origin of major groups such as birds and mammals back into the Palaeozoic era, and to claim that no order of plants had ever gone extinct.

Much paper has been consumed by historians of science ruminating on this strange and somewhat unclear idea.^[27] Huxley was wrong to pitch the loss of orders in the Phanerozoic as low as 7%, and he did not estimate the number of new orders which evolved. Persistent types sat rather uncomfortably next to Darwin's more fluid ideas; despite his intelligence, it took Huxley a surprisingly long time to appreciate some of the implications of evolution. However, gradually Huxley moved away from this conservative style of thinking as his understanding of palaeontology, and the discipline itself, developed.

Huxley's detailed anatomical work was, as always, first-rate and productive. His work on fossil fish shows his distinctive approach: whereas pre-Darwinian naturalists collected, identified and classified, Huxley worked mainly to reveal the evolutionary relationships between groups.

Huxley by Wirgman
a drawing in pencil, 1882

The lobed-finned fish (such as coelacanths and lung fish) have paired appendages whose internal skeleton is attached to the shoulder or pelvis by a single bone, the humerus or femur. His interest in these fish brought him close to the origin of tetrapods, one of the most important areas of vertebrate palaeontology.^[28]^[29]^[30]

The study of fossil reptiles led to his demonstrating the fundamental affinity of birds and reptiles, which he united under the title of Sauropsida. His papers on Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds were of great interest then and still are.^[17]^[31]^[32]

Apart from his interest in persuading the world that man was a primate, and had descended from the same stock as the apes, Huxley did little work on mammals, with one exception. On his tour of America Huxley was shown the remarkable series of fossil horses, discovered by O.C. Marsh, in Yale's Peabody Museum.^[33]^[34] Marsh was part palaeontologist, part robber baron, a man who had hunted buffalo and met Red Cloud (in 1874). Funded by his uncle George Peabody, Marsh had made some remarkable discoveries: the huge Cretaceous aquatic bird Hesperornis, and the dinosaur footprints along the Connecticut River were worth the trip by themselves, but the horse fossils were really special.

The collection at that time went from the small four-toed forest-dwelling Orohippus from the Eocene through three-toed species such as Miohippus to species more like the modern horse. By looking at their teeth he could see that, as the size grew larger and the toes reduced, the teeth changed from those of a browser to those of a grazer. All such changes could be explained by a general alteration in habitat from forest to grassland. And, we now know, that is what did happen over large areas of North America from the Eocene to the Pleistocene: the ultimate causative agent was global temperature reduction (see Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum). The modern account of the evolution of the horse has many other members, and the overall appearance of the tree of descent is more like a bush than a straight line.

The horse series also strongly suggested that the process was gradual, and that the origin of the modern horse lay in North America, not in Eurasia. If so, then something must have happened to horses in North America, since none were there when Europeans arrived. The experience was enough for Huxley to give credence to Darwin's gradualism, and to introduce the story of the horse into his lecture series.

Darwin's bulldog

The frontispiece to Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863): the image compares the skeletons of apes to humans. The gibbon (left) is double size.

Debate with Wilberforce

Main article: 1860 Oxford evolution debate

Famously, Huxley responded to Wilberforce in the debate at the British Association meeting, on Saturday 30 June 1860 at the Oxford University Museum. His presence there had been encouraged by Robert Chambers, the Scottish publisher and author of "Vestiges" who had met Huxley walking the streets of Oxford in a dispirited state on the previous evening. Huxley was joined at the debate by his and Darwin's friends Hooker and Lubbock, and they were opposed by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and Robert FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle. The chair for this debate was Darwins's former botany tutor John Stevens Henslow, and flanking him on the platform were Dr John William Draper from New York, Rev Dingle, Hooker, Lubbock, Brodie, Professor Beale and Huxley.^[48]

Wilberforce had a track record against evolution as far back as the previous Oxford B.A. meeting in 1847 when he attacked Chambers' Vestiges. For the more challenging task of opposing the Origin, and the implication that man descended from apes, he had been assiduously coached by Richard Owen – Owen stayed with him the night before the debate.^[49] On the day Wilberforce repeated some of the arguments from his Quarterly Review article (written but not yet published), then ventured onto slippery ground. His famous jibe at Huxley (as to whether Huxley was descended from an ape on his mother's side or his father's side) was probably unplanned, and certainly unwise. Huxley's reply to the effect that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate—the exact wording is not certain—was widely recounted in pamphlets and a spoof play.

The letters of Alfred Newton include one to his brother giving an eye-witness account of the debate, and written less than a month afterwards.^[50] Other eyewitnesses, with one or two exceptions (Hooker especially thought he had made the best points), give similar accounts, at varying dates after the event.^[51] The general view was and still is that Huxley got much the better of the exchange though Wilberforce himself thought he had done quite well. In the absence of a verbatim report differing perceptions are difficult to judge fairly; Huxley wrote a detailed account for Darwin, a letter which does not survive; however, a letter to his friend Frederick Daniel Dyster does survive with an account just three months after the event.^[52]^[53]^[54]^[55]^[56]^[57]

One effect of the debate was to increase hugely Huxley's visibility amongst educated people, through the accounts in newspapers and periodicals. Another consequence was to alert him to the importance of public debate: a lesson he never forgot. A third effect was to serve notice that Darwinian ideas could not be easily dismissed: on the contrary, they would be vigorously defended against orthodox authority.^[58]^[59] A fourth effect was to promote professionalism in science, with its implied need for scientific education. A fifth consequence was indirect: as Wilberforce had feared, a defence of evolution did undermine literal belief in the Old Testament, especially the Book of Genesis. Many of the liberal clergy at the meeting were quite pleased with the outcome of the debate; they were supporters, perhaps, of the controversial Essays and Reviews. Thus both on the side of science, and on the side of religion, the debate was important, and its outcome significant.^[60] (see also below)

That Huxley and Wilberforce remained on courteous terms after the debate (and able to work together on projects such as the Metropolitan Board of Education) says something about both men, whereas Huxley and Owen were never reconciled.

Man's place in nature

Natural selection

Huxley was certainly not slavish in his dealings with Darwin. As shown in every biography, they had quite different and rather complementary characters. Important also, Darwin was a field naturalist, but Huxley was an anatomist, so there was a difference in their experience of nature. Lastly, Darwin's views on science were different from Huxley's views. For Darwin, natural selection was the best way to explain evolution because it explained a huge range of natural history facts and observations: it solved problems. Huxley, on the other hand, was an empiricist who trusted what he could see, and some things are not easily seen. With this in mind, one can appreciate the debate between them, Darwin writing his letters, Huxley never going quite so far as to say he thought Darwin was right.

Huxley's reservations on natural selection were of the type "until selection and breeding can be seen to give rise to varieties which are infertile with each other, natural selection cannot be proved".^[74]^[75] Huxley's position on selection was agnostic; yet he gave no credence to any other theory.

Darwin's part in the discussion came mostly in letters, as was his wont, along the lines: "The empirical evidence you call for is both impossible in practical terms, and in any event unnecessary. It's the same as asking to see every step in the transformation (or the splitting) of one species into another. My way so many issues are clarified and problems solved; no other theory does nearly so well".^[76]

Huxley's reservation, as Helena Cronin has so aptly remarked, was contagious: "it spread itself for years among all kinds of doubters of Darwinism".^[77] One reason for this doubt was that comparative anatomy could address the question of descent, but not the question of mechanism.^[78]

The X Club

Main article: X Club

In November 1864 Huxley succeeded in launching a dining club, the X Club, like-minded people working to advance the cause of science; not surprisingly, the club consisted of most of his closest friends. There were nine members, who decided at their first meeting that there should be no more. The members were: Huxley, John Tyndall, J.D. Hooker, John Lubbock (banker, biologist and neighbour of Darwin), Herbert Spencer (social philosopher and sub-editor of the Economist), William Spottiswoode (mathematician and the Queen's Printer), Thomas Hirst (Professor of Physics at University College London), Edward Frankland (the new Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution) and George Busk, zoologist and palaeontologist (formerly surgeon for HMS Dreadnought). All except Spencer were Fellows of the Royal Society. Tyndall was a particularly close friend; for many years they met regularly and discussed issues of the day. On more than one occasion Huxley joined Tyndall in the latter's trips into the Alps and helped with his investigations in glaciology.^[79]^[80]^[81]

There were also some quite significant X-Club satellites such as William Flower and George Rolleston, (Huxley protegés), and liberal clergyman Arthur Stanley, the Dean of Westminster. Guests such as Charles Darwin and Hermann von Helmholtz were entertained from time to time.^[82]

They would dine early on first Thursdays at a hotel, planning what to do; high on the agenda was to change the way the Royal Society Council did business. It was no coincidence that the Council met later that same evening. First item for the Xs was to get the Copley Medal for Darwin, which they managed after quite a struggle.

The next step was to acquire a journal to spread their ideas. This was the weekly Reader, which they bought, revamped and redirected. Huxley had already become part-owner of the Natural History Review^[83] bolstered by the support of Lubbock, Rolleston, Busk and Carpenter (X-clubbers and satellites). The journal was switched to pro-Darwinian lines and relaunched in January 1861. After a stream of good articles the NHR failed after four years; but it had helped at a critical time for the establishment of evolution. The Reader also failed, despite its broader appeal which included art and literature as well as science. The periodical market was quite crowded at the time, but most probably the critical factor was Huxley's time; he was simply over-committed, and could not afford to hire full-time editors. This occurred often in his life: Huxley took on too many ventures, and was not so astute as Darwin at getting others to do work for him.

However, the experience gained with the Reader was put to good use when the X Club put their weight behind the founding of Nature in 1869. This time no mistakes were made: above all there was a permanent editor (though not full-time), Norman Lockyer, who served until 1919, a year before his death. In 1925, to celebrate his centenary, Nature issued a supplement devoted to Huxley.^[84]

The peak of the X Club's influence was from 1873–85 as Hooker, Spottiswoode and Huxley were Presidents of the Royal Society in succession. Spencer resigned in 1889 after a dispute with Huxley over state support for science.^[85] After 1892 it was just an excuse for the surviving members to meet. Hooker died in 1911, and Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) was the last surviving member.

Huxley was also an active member of the Metaphysical Society, which ran from 1869–80.^[86] It was formed around a nucleus of clergy and expanded to include all kinds of opinions. Tyndall and Huxley later joined The Club (founded by Dr. Johnson) when they could be sure that Owen would not turn up.^[87]

Educational influence

When Huxley himself was young there were virtually no degrees in British universities in the biological sciences and few courses. Most biologists of his day were either self-taught, or took medical degrees. When he retired there were established chairs in biological disciplines in most universities, and a broad consensus on the curricula to be followed. Huxley was the single most influential person in this transformation.

School of Mines and Zoology

In the early 1870s the Royal School of Mines moved to new quarters in South Kensington; ultimately it would become one of the constituent parts of Imperial College London. The move gave Huxley the chance to give more prominence to laboratory work in biology teaching, an idea suggested by practice in German universities.^[20] In the main, the method was based on the use of carefully chosen types, and depended on the dissection of anatomy, supplemented by microscopy, museum specimens and some elementary physiology at the hands of Foster.

The typical day would start with Huxley lecturing at 9am, followed by a program of laboratory work supervised by his demonstrators.^[88] Huxley's demonstrators were picked men—all became leaders of biology in Britain in later life, spreading Huxley's ideas as well as their own. Michael Foster became Professor of Physiology at Cambridge; E. Ray Lankester became Jodrell Professor of Zoology at University College London (1875–91), Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford (1891–98) and Director of the Natural History Museum (1898–1907); S.H. Vines became Professor of Botany at Cambridge; W.T. Thiselton-Dyer became Hooker's successor at Kew (he was already Hooker's son-in-law!); T. Jeffery Parker became Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College, Cardiff; and William Rutherford^[89] became the Professor of Physiology at Edinburgh. William Flower, Conservator to the Hunterian Museum, and THH's assistant in many dissections, became Sir William Flower, Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and, later, Director of the Natural History Museum.^[25] It's a remarkable list of disciples, especially when contrasted with Owen who, in a longer professional life than Huxley, left no disciples at all. "No one fact tells so strongly against Owen... as that he has never reared one pupil or follower".^[90]

Huxley's courses for students were so much narrower than the man himself that many were bewildered by the contrast: "The teaching of zoology by use of selected animal types has come in for much criticism";^[91] Looking back in 1914 to his time as a student, Sir Arthur Shipley said "[Although] Darwin's later works all dealt with living organisms, yet our obsession was with the dead, with bodies preserved, and cut into the most refined slices".^[92] E.W MacBride said "Huxley... would persist in looking at animals as material structures and not as living, active beings; in a word... he was a necrologist.^[93] To put it simply, Huxley preferred to teach what he had actually seen with his own eyes.

Photograph of Huxley (c. 1890)

This largely morphological program of comparative anatomy remained at the core of most biological education for a hundred years until the advent of cell and molecular biology and interest in evolutionary ecology forced a fundamental rethink. It is an interesting fact that the methods of the field naturalists who led the way in developing the theory of evolution (Darwin, Wallace, Fritz Müller, Henry Bates) were scarcely represented at all in Huxley's program. Ecological investigation of life in its environment was virtually non-existent, and theory, evolutionary or otherwise, was at a discount. Michael Ruse finds no mention of evolution or Darwinism in any of the exams set by Huxley, and confirms the lecture content based on two complete sets of lecture notes.^[94]

Since Darwin, Wallace and Bates did not hold teaching posts at any stage of their adult careers (and Műller never returned from Brazil) the imbalance in Huxley's program went uncorrected. It is surely strange that Huxley's courses did not contain an account of the evidence collected by those naturalists of life in the tropics; evidence which they had found so convincing, and which caused their views on evolution by natural selection to be so similar. Desmond suggests that "[biology] had to be simple, synthetic and assimilable [because] it was to train teachers and had no other heuristic function".^[95] That must be part of the reason; indeed it does help to explain the stultifying nature of much school biology. But zoology as taught at all levels became far too much the product of one man.

Huxley was comfortable with comparative anatomy, at which he was the greatest master of the day. He was not an all-round naturalist like Darwin, who had shown clearly enough how to weave together detailed factual information and subtle arguments across the vast web of life. Huxley chose, in his teaching (and to some extent in his research) to take a more straightforward course, concentrating on his personal strengths.

Schools and the Bible

Huxley was also a major influence in the direction taken by British schools: in November 1870 he was voted onto the London School Board.^[96] In primary schooling, he advocated a wide range of disciplines, similar to what is taught today: reading, writing, arithmetic, art, science, music, etc. In secondary education he recommended two years of basic liberal studies followed by two years of some upper-division work, focusing on a more specific area of study. A practical example is his famous essay On a piece of chalk ^[97] first published in Macmillan's Magazine in London, 1868. The piece reconstructs the geological history of Britain, from a simple piece of chalk and demonstrates science as "organized common sense".

Huxley supported the reading of the Bible in schools. This may seem out of step with his agnostic convictions, but he believed that the Bible's significant moral teachings and superb use of language were relevant to English life. "I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches".^[98] However, what Huxley proposed was to create an edited version of the Bible, shorn of "shortcomings and errors... statements to which men of science absolutely and entirely demur... These tender children [should] not be taught that which you do not yourselves believe".^[99]^[100] The Board voted against his idea, but it also voted against the idea that public money should be used to support students attending church schools. Vigorous debate took place on such points, and the debates were minuted in detail. Huxley said "I will never be a party to enabling the State to sweep the children of this country into denominational schools".^[101]^[102] The Act of Parliament which founded board schools permitted the reading of the Bible, but did not permit any denominational doctrine to be taught.

It may be right to see Huxley's life and work as contributing to the secularisation of British society which gradually occurred over the following century. Ernst Mayr said "It can hardly be doubted that [biology] has helped to undermine traditional beliefs and value systems"^[103] — and Huxley more than anyone else was responsible for this trend in Britain. Some modern Christian apologists consider Huxley the father of atheistic evangelism, though he himself maintained that he was an agnostic, not an atheist. He was, however, a lifelong and determined opponent of almost all organized religion throughout his life, especially the "Roman Church... carefully calculated for the destruction of all that is highest in the moral nature, in the intellectual freedom, and in the political freedom of mankind".^[102]^[104] Lenin remarked (in Materialism and empirio-criticism) "In Huxley's case... agnosticism serves as a fig-leaf for materialism" (see also the Debate with Wilberforce above).

Adult education

Huxley's interest in education went still further than school and university classrooms; he made a great effort to reach interested adults of all kinds: after all, he himself was largely self-educated. There were his lecture courses for working men, many of which were published afterwards, and there was the use he made of journalism, partly to earn money but mostly to reach out to the literate public. For most of his adult life he wrote for periodicals—the Westminster Review, the Saturday Review, the Reader, the Pall Mall Gazette, Macmillan's Magazine, the Contemporary Review. Germany was still ahead in formal science education, but interested people in Victorian Britain could use their initiative and find out what was going on by reading periodicals and using the lending libraries.^[105]^[106]

In 1868 Huxley became Principal of the South London Working Men's College in Blackfriars Road. The moving spirit was a portmanteau worker, Wm. Rossiter, who did most of the work; the funds were put up mainly by F.D. Maurice's Christian Socialists.^[107]^[108] At sixpence for a course and a penny for a lecture by Huxley, this was some bargain; and so was the free library organised by the college, an idea which was widely copied. Huxley thought, and said, that the men who attended were as good as any country squire.^[109]

The technique of printing his more popular lectures in periodicals which were sold to the general public was extremely effective. A good example was The physical basis of life, a lecture given in Edinburgh on 8 November 1868. Its theme — that vital action is nothing more than "the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it" — shocked the audience, though that was nothing compared to the uproar when it was published in the Fortnightly Review for February 1869. John Morley, the editor, said "No article that had appeared in any periodical for a generation had caused such a sensation".^[110] The issue was reprinted seven times and protoplasm became a household word; Punch added 'Professor Protoplasm' to his other soubriquets.

The topic had been stimulated by Huxley seeing the cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells, which is indeed a sensational sight. For these audiences Huxley's claim that this activity should not be explained by words such as vitality, but by the working of its constituent chemicals, was surprising and shocking. Today we would perhaps emphasise the extraordinary structural arrangement of those chemicals as the key to understanding what cells do, but little of that was known in the nineteenth century.

When the Archbishop of York thought this 'new philosophy' was based on Auguste Comte's positivism, Huxley corrected him: "Comte's philosophy [is just] Catholicism minus Christianity" (Huxley 1893 vol 1 of Collected Essays Methods & Results 156). A later version was "[positivism is] sheer Popery with M. Comte in the chair of St Peter, and with the names of the saints changed". (lecture on The scientific aspects of positivism Huxley 1870 Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews p149). Huxley's dismissal of positivism damaged it so severely that Comte's ideas withered in Britain.

Huxley and the humanities

During his life, and especially in the last ten years after retirement, Huxley wrote on many issues relating to the humanities.^[111]^[112]^[113]^[114]

Perhaps the best known of these topics is Evolution and Ethics, which deals with the question of whether biology has anything particular to say about moral philosophy. Both Huxley and his grandson Julian Huxley gave Romanes Lectures on this theme.^[115]^[116]^[117] For a start, Huxley dismisses religion as a source of moral authority. Next, he believes the mental characteristics of man are as much a product of evolution as the physical aspects. Thus, our emotions, our intellect, our tendency to prefer living in groups and spend resources on raising our young are part and parcel of our evolution, and therefore inherited.

Despite this, the details of our values and ethics are not inherited: they are partly determined by our culture, and partly chosen by ourselves. Morality and duty are often at war with natural instincts; ethics cannot be derived from the struggle for existence. It is therefore our responsibility to make ethical choices (see Ethics and Evolutionary ethics). This seems to put Huxley as a compatibilist in the Free Will vs Determinism debate. In this argument Huxley is diametrically opposed to his old friend Herbert Spencer.

"Of moral purpose I see not a trace in nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture." letter THH to W. Platt Ball.^[118]

Huxley's dissection of Rousseau's views on man and society is another example of his later work. The essay undermines Rousseau's ideas on man as a preliminary to undermining his ideas on the ownership of property. Characteristic is:

"The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction." ^[119]

Huxley's method of argumentation (his strategy and tactics of persuasion in speech and print) is itself much studied.^[120] His career included controversial debates with scientists, clerics and politicians; persuasive discussions with Royal Commissions and other public bodies; lectures and articles for the general public, and a mass of detailed letter-writing to friends and other correspondents. A large number of textbooks have excerpted his prose for anthologies.^[121]

Royal and other commissions

Huxley worked on ten Royal and other commissions (titles somewhat shortened here).^[122] The Royal Commission is the senior investigative forum in the British constitution. A rough analysis shows that five commissions involved science and scientific education; three involved medicine and three involved fisheries. Several involve difficult ethical and legal issues. All deal with possible changes to law and/or administrative practice.

Royal Commissions

1862 Trawling for herrings on the coast of Scotland.
1863–65 Sea fisheries of the United Kingdom.
1870–71 The Contagious Diseases Acts.
1870–75 Scientific instruction and the advancement of science.
1876 The practice of subjugating live animals to scientific experiments (vivisection).
1876–78 The universities of Scotland.
1881–82 The Medical Acts. [i.e. the legal framework for medicine]
1884 Trawl, net and beam trawl fishing.

Other commissions

1866 On the Royal College of Science for Ireland.
1868 On science and art instruction in Ireland.

Family

Pencil drawing of Huxley by his daughter, Marian

Huxley with his grandson Julian in 1893

Marian (Mady) Huxley, by her husband John Collier

Mental problems in the family

Biographers have sometimes noted the occurrence of mental illness in the Huxley family. His father became "sunk in worse than childish imbecility of mind",^[124] and later died in Barming Asylum; brother George suffered from "extreme mental anxiety"^[125] and died in 1863 leaving serious debts. Brother James, a well known psychiatrist and Superintendent of Kent County Asylum, was at 55 "as near mad as any sane man can be";^[126] and there is more. His favourite daughter, the artistically talented Mady (Marian), who became the first wife of artist John Collier, was troubled by mental illness for years. She died of pneumonia in her mid-twenties.^[127]^[128]

About Huxley himself we have a more complete record. As a young apprentice to a medical practitioner, aged thirteen or fourteen, Huxley was taken to watch a post-mortem dissection. Afterwards he sank into a 'deep lethargy' and though Huxley ascribed this to dissection poisoning, Bibby^[129] and others may be right to suspect that emotional shock precipitated the depression. Huxley recuperated on a farm, looking thin and ill.

The next episode we know of in Huxley's life when he suffered a debilitating depression was on the third voyage of HMS Rattlesnake in 1848.^[130] Huxley had further periods of depression at the end of 1871,^[131] and again in 1873.^[132] Finally, in 1884 he sank into another depression, and this time it precipitated his decision to retire in 1885, at the age of only 60.^[133] This is enough to indicate the way depression (or perhaps a moderate bi-polar disorder) interfered with his life, yet unlike some of the other family members, he was able to function extremely well at other times.

The problems continued sporadically into the third generation. Two of Leonard's sons suffered serious depression: Trevennen committed suicide in 1914 and Julian suffered a breakdown in 1913,^[134] and five more later in life.

Satires

Huxley (right) and Richard Owen inspect a "water baby" in Edward Linley Sambourne's 1881 illustration

Darwin's ideas and Huxley's controversies gave rise to many cartoons and satires. It was the debate about man's place in nature that roused such widespread comment: cartoons are so numerous as to be almost impossible to count; Darwin's head on a monkey's body is one of the visual clichés of the age. The "Great Hippocampus Question attracted particular attention:

Monkeyana (Punch vol 40, 18 May 1861). Signed 'Gorilla', this turned out to be by Sir Philip Egerton MP, amateur naturalist, fossil fish collector and — Richard Owen's patron!^[135] Last two stanzas:

Next HUXLEY replies
That OWEN he lies
And garbles his Latin quotation;
That his facts are not new,
His mistakes not a few,
Detrimental to his reputation.

To twice slay the slain
By dint of the Brain
(Thus HUXLEY concludes his review)
Is but labour in vain,
unproductive of gain,
And so I shall bid you "Adieu"!
The Gorilla's Dilemma (Punch 1862, vol 43 p164). First two lines:

Say am I a man or a brother,
Or only an anthropoid ape?
Report of a sad case recently tried before the Lord Mayor, Owen versus Huxley.^[136] Lord Mayor asks whether either side is known to the police:

Policeman X — Huxley, your Worship, I take to be a young hand, but very vicious; but Owen I have seen before. He got into trouble with an old bone man, called Mantell, who never could be off complaining as Owen prigged his bones. People did say that the old man never got over it, and Owen worritted him to death; but I don't think it was so bad as that. Hears as Owen takes the chair at a crib in Bloomsbury. I don't think it will be a harmonic meeting altogether. And Huxley hangs out in Jermyn Street.

(Tom Huxley's 'low set' included Hooker 'in the green and vegetable line' and 'Charlie Darwin, the pigeon-fancier'; Owen's 'crib in Bloomsbury' was the British Museum, of which Natural History was but one department.)
The Water Babies, a fairy tale for a land baby by Charles Kingsley (serialised in Macmillan's Magazine 1862–63, published in book form, with additions, in 1863). Kingsley had been among first to give a favourable review to Darwin's On the Origin of Species, having "long since... learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species",^[137] and the story includes a satire on the reaction to Darwin's theory, with the main scientific participants appearing, including Richard Owen and Huxley. In 1892 Thomas Henry Huxley's five-year-old grandson Julian saw the illustration by Edward Linley Sambourne (right) and wrote his grandfather a letter asking:

Dear Grandpater – Have you seen a Waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Could I see it some day? – Your loving Julian.

Huxley wrote back:

My dear Julian – I could never make sure about that Water Baby... My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in the water as he did – There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.

When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal seers, and see things more wonderful than the Water Babies where other folks can see nothing.

Portrayals

Huxley appears alongside Charles Darwin and Samuel Wilberforce in the play Darwin in Malibu by British playwright Crispin Whittell and is portrayed by British actor Toby Jones in the 2009 film Creation.

Notes

^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online 2006
^ Huxley T.H. 1889. Agnosticism: a rejoinder. In Collected Essays vol 5 Science and Christian tradition. Macmillan, London.
^ Poulton E.B. 1909. Charles Darwin and the origin of species. London.
^ Lankester E. Ray 1895. The Right Hon. T.H. Huxley. Athenaeum, 6 July. Lankester commented that Huxley was "only accidentally a zoologist".
^ Desmond 1997 'Huxley in perspective', 235–261, an outstanding summary of Huxley in his social & historical context, scarcely mentions his zoological work.
^ Bibby, amongst others, queried this account, which owes its origin to Leonard Huxley's biography (1900). Bibby, Cyril 1959. T.H. Huxley: scientist, humanist and educator. Watts, London. p3-4
^ ^a ^b ^c Desmond 1994
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Huxley 1900
^ Chesney, Kellow 1970. The Victorian underworld. Temple Smith, London; Pelican 1972, p105 and p421.
^ The cut-price anatomy schools and Robert Knox are well treated in Desmond's account of materialist medical dissidents of the 1820s and 30s: Desmond A. 1989. The politics of evolution: morphology, medicine and reform in radical London. Chicago.
^ Desmond 1994 p35
^ Huxley 1935
^ Di Gregorio 1984
^ Huxley 1859
^ Tyndall 1896 p7, 9, 66, 71.
^ Holland 2007 p153–5
^ ^a ^b Foster & Lankester 1898-1903
^ MacGillivray 1852
^ Desmond 1997 p230
^ ^a ^b Bibby 1959
^ Desmond & 1997 Huxley in perspective p235
^ Bibby 1972
^ Desmond 1998 p431
^ Desmond & Moore 1991
^ ^a ^b Desmond 1997
^ Lyons 1999 p11
^ Desmond A. 1982. Archetypes and ancestors: palaeontology in Victorian London 1850-1875. Muller, London.
^ Clack 2002
^ Huxley 1861 p67–84
^ Foster & Lankester 1898-1903 p163–187
^ Paul 2002 p171–224
^ Prum 2003 p550–561
^ Desmond 1997 p88
^ Huxley 1877
^ Huxley 1854 p425–439
^ Huxley 1855 p82–85
^ Browne 1995
^ Desmond 1994 p222
^ ^a ^b Browne 2002
^ Darwin & Wallace 1858
^ Huxley 1900 vol 1, p189
^ Huxley 1893-94a p1–20
^ Foster & Lankester 1898-1903 p400
^ Owen 1860
^ Wilberforce 1860
^ Darwin, Francis (ed) 1887. The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. Murray, London, volume 2.
^ A more complete version is available in Wikiquote
^ Jensen, J. Vernon 1991. Thomas Henry Huxley: communicating for science. U. of Delaware Press, Newark. p209, note 67
^ Desmond & Moore 1991 p493
^ Wollaston AFR 1921. Life of Alfred Newton: late Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Cambridge University 1866-1907, with a Preface by Sir Archibald Geikie OM. Dutton, NY. p118–120
^ Jensen, J. Vernon 1991. Thomas Henry Huxley: communicating for science. U. of Delaware Press, Newark. [Chapter 3 is an excellent survey, and its notes gives references to all the eyewitness accounts except Newton: see notes 61, 66, 67, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93, 95: p208-211]
^ Huxley to Dr FD Dyster, 9th September 1860, Huxley Papers 15.117.
^ Browne 2002 p118
^ Huxley 1900 Chapter 14
^ Desmond 1994 p276–281
^ Lucas 1979 p313–330. A pro-Wilberforce account; lists many sources, but not Alfred Newton's letter to his brother. Many of Lucas' points are treated adversely in Jensen 1991, for example, note 77, p209.
^ Gould 1991 Chapter 26 'Knight takes Bishop?' is Gould's take on the Huxley-Wilberforce debate.
^ Darwin F. (ed) 1897-99. Life and letters of Charles Darwin. 2 vols, Murray, London. I, 156-7 Darwin to Huxley: "It is of enormous importance the showing the world that a few first-rate men are not afraid of expressing their opinion."
^ Darwin F. and A.C.Seward (eds) 1903. More letters of Charles Darwin. 2 vols, Murray, London. II, 204 Leonard Huxley: "The importance... lay in the open resistance that was made to authority".
^ Jensen, J. Vernon 1991. Thomas Henry Huxley: communicating for science. U. of Delaware Press, Newark. p83-6
^ Foster & Lankester 1898-1903 p538–606
^ Huxley 1862b
^ Darwin 1859, p490
^ Owen 1858 p1–37
^ Burkhardt 1984 onwards (continuing series)
^ Cosans 2009 p109–111
^ For the full text of the addendum see s:The cerebral structure of man and apes
^ Athenaeum September 21, 1861 p498. [key sentence italicised]
^ Huxley 1862a p420–422
^ Huxley 1870. On the geographical distribution of the chief modifications of Mankind. Journal of the Ethnological Society of London. [1]
^ Behar, Doran M., Richard Villems et al. 2008. The dawn of human matrilineal diversity. Am J. Human Genetics 82, 1130-1140.
^ Balaresque P.L., Ballereau S.J. and Jobling M.A. 2007. Challenges in human genetic diversity: demographic history and adaptation. Human molecular genetics 16 (R2), R134-9.
^ Jobling M.A., Hurles M.E. & Tylor-Smith C. 2004. Human evolutionary genetics: origins, peoples and disease. Garland, N.Y.
^ Variously worded in Huxley 1860a, Huxley 1860b, Huxley 1861, Huxley 1862b and Huxley1887
^ Poulton 1896 chapter 18 gives detailed quotations from Huxley and discussion—Darwin's letters to Huxley being not yet published
^ Letters CD to THH in Darwin & Seward 1903 vol 1 p137–8, 225–6, 230-2, 274, 277, 287
^ Cronin 1991 p397
^ Mayr 1982
^ Huxley 1857 p241
^ Tyndall 1896 p338–339, 359, 379–383, 406. "During the summer of 1857 he carefully experimented with coloured liquids on the Mer de Glace and its tributaries..." Philosophical Magazine 1857, vol xiv p241
^ Tyndall 1857 p327–346
^ Jensen 1970 p63–72
^ Desmond 1994 p284, 289–290.
^ Barr 1997 p1
^ Desmond 1997 p191
^ Irvine 1955 Chapter 15
^ Desmond 1997 p123
^ Osborn 1924
^ Desmond 1997 p14, 60
^ Charles Darwin to Asa Gray 1860 in Darwin & Seward 1903 p153
^ Lester 1995 p67
^ Wollaston 1921 p102
^ MacBride 1934 p65
^ Ruse 1997
^ Desmond 1997 p273, note 20
^ Desmond 1997 p19–20
^ On a Piece of Chalk (1868)
^ Said of those who wished to abolish all religious teaching, when really all they wanted was to free education from the Church. THH 1873. Critiques and Addresses p90
^ Huxley 1893-94b p397
^ Bibby 1959 p153
^ School Board Chronicle vol 2, p326
^ ^a ^b Bibby 1959 p155
^ Mayr 1982 p80
^ School Board Chronicle vol 2, p.360
^ White 2003 p69
^ Note: articles are listed, and some are available, in The Huxley File at Clark University
^ Bibby 1959 p33
^ Desmond 1994 p361–362
^ Desmond 1994 Chapter 19
^ Morley 1917 p90
^ Barr 1997
^ Paradis, James G. T.H. Huxley: Man's place in nature. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1978.
^ Peterson, Houston 1932. Huxley: prophet of science. Longmans Green, London.
^ Huxley T.H. 1893-4. Collected essays: vol 4 Science and Hebrew tradition; vol 5 Science and Christian tradition; vol 6 Hume, with helps to the study of Berkeley; vol 7 Man's place in nature; vol 9: Evolution and ethics, and other essays. Macmillan, London.
^ Huxley T.H. and Huxley J. 1947. Evolution and ethics 1893-1943. Pilot, London. In USA as Touchstone for ethics, Harper, N.Y. [includes text from the Romanes lectures of both T.H. Huxley and Julian Huxley]
^ Paradis, James & Williams, George C 1989. Evolution and Ethics: T.H. Huxley's 'Evolution and Ethics', with new essays on its Victorian and sociobiological context. Princeton, N.J.
^ Reed J.R. 'Huxley and the question of morality'. In Barr 1997
^ Huxley 1900 vol 2, p285
^ Huxley T.H. 1890. The natural inequality of man. Nineteenth Century January; reprinted in Collected Essays vol 1, p290–335
^ Jensen 1991
^ Jensen 1991, p196
^ Huxley 1900
^ T. H. Huxley Letters and Diary 1878
^ letter THH to eldest sister Lizzie 1853 HP 31.21
^ THH to Lizzie 1858 HP 31.24
^ THH to Lizzie HP 31.44
^ THH to JT 1887 HP 9.164
^ Desmond 1997 p175–176
^ Bibby 1972 p7
^ Huxley 1935 Chapter 5 'Wanderings of a human soul'
^ Desmond 1997 p27
^ Desmond 1997 p49
^ Desmond 1997 p151
^ Clark 1968
^ Desmond 1994 p296
^ pamphlet, published by George Pycraft, London 1863; Huxley Papers 79.6
^ Darwin 1887 287

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Ruse, Michael (1997), "Thomas Henry Huxley and the status of evolution as science", in Barr, Alan P., Thomas Henry Huxley's place in science and letters: centenary essays, Georgia: Athens
Spencer, Herbert (1904), Autobiography. 2 vols, London: Williams & Norgate
Tyndall, John; Huxley, Thomas Henry (1857), "On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers", Philosophical Transactions 147: 327–346, doi:10.1098/rstl.1857.0016
Tyndall, John (1896), The Glaciers of the Alps (Original edition 1860 ed.), Longmans, Green and Co., http://www.archive.org/details/glaciersalpsbeing00tyndrich
Webb, Beatrice (1926), My apprenticeship, London: Longmans
Wilberforce, Samuel (1860), "Darwin's Origin of Species", Quarterly Review (102): 225–64
Wollaston, A.F.R. (1921), Life of Alfred Newton 1829–1907
White, Paul (2003), Thomas Huxley: making the 'Man of Science', Cambridge University Press

Other biographies of Huxley

Huxley's grave

Ashforth, Albert. Thomas Henry Huxley. Twayne, New York 1969.
Ayres, Clarence. Huxley. Norton, New York 1932.
Clodd, Edward. Thomas Henry Huxley. Blackwood, Edinburgh 1902.
Huxley, Leonard. Thomas Henry Huxley: a character sketch. Watts, London 1920.
Irvine, William. Apes, Angels and Victorians. New York 1955.
Irvine, William. Thomas Henry Huxley. Longmans, London 1960.
Mitchell, P. Chalmers. Thomas Henry Huxley: a sketch of his life and work London 1901. Available at Project Gutenberg.
Voorhees, Irving Wilson. The teachings of Thomas Henry Huxley. Broadway, New York 1907.

External links

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895) National Library of Australia, Trove, People and Organisation record for Thomas Huxley
Works by Thomas Henry Huxley at Project Gutenberg
The Huxley File at Clark University - Lists his publications, contains much of his writing.
Works by Thomas H. Huxley in audio format from LibriVox
Huxley review: Darwin on the origin of species The Times, 26 December 1859 p8–9.
Huxley review: Time and life: Mr Darwin's "Origin of species." Macmillan's Magazine 1: 1859 p142–148.
Huxley review: Darwin on the origin of Species, Westminster Review, 17 (n.s.) April 1860 p541–570.

Academic offices
Preceded by Thomas Wharton Jones	Fullerian Professor of Physiology 1855–1858	Succeeded by Richard Owen
Preceded by John Marshall	Fullerian Professor of Physiology 1865–1869	Succeeded by Michael Foster
Awards and achievements
Preceded by George Newport	Royal Medal 1852	Succeeded by Charles Darwin
Preceded by L-G de Koninck	Wollaston Medal 1876	Succeeded by Robert Mallet
Preceded by George Bentham	Clarke Medal 1880	Succeeded by Frederick McCoy
Preceded by Alphonse de Candolle	Linnaean Medal 1890	Succeeded by Jean-Baptiste Bornet
Preceded by Joseph Dalton Hooker	Darwin Medal 1894	Succeeded by Giovanni Grassi

v · d · eCopley Medallists

Richard Owen (1851) · Alexander von Humboldt (1852) · Heinrich Wilhelm Dove (1853) · Johannes Peter Müller (1854) · Léon Foucault (1855) · Henri Milne-Edwards (1856) · Michel Eugène Chevreul (1857) · Charles Lyell (1858) · Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1859) · Robert Bunsen (1860) · Louis Agassiz (1861) · Thomas Graham (1862) · Adam Sedgwick (1863) · Charles Darwin (1864) · Michel Chasles (1865) · Julius Plücker (1866) · Karl Ernst von Baer (1867) · Charles Wheatstone (1868) · Henri Victor Regnault (1869) · James Prescott Joule (1870) · Julius Robert von Mayer (1871) · Friedrich Wöhler (1872) · Hermann von Helmholtz (1873) · Louis Pasteur (1874) · August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1875) · Claude Bernard (1876) · James Dwight Dana (1877) · Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1878) · Rudolf Clausius (1879) · James Joseph Sylvester (1880) · Charles-Adolphe Wurtz (1881) · Arthur Cayley (1882) · William Thomson (1883) · Carl Ludwig (1884) · Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz (1885) · Franz Ernst Neumann (1886) · Joseph Dalton Hooker (1887) · Thomas Henry Huxley (1888) · George Salmon (1889) · Simon Newcomb (1890) · Stanislao Cannizzaro (1891) · Rudolf Virchow (1892) · George Gabriel Stokes (1893) · Edward Frankland (1894) · Karl Weierstrass (1895) · Karl Gegenbaur (1896) · Albert von Kölliker (1897) · William Huggins (1898) · John William Strutt (1899) · Marcellin Berthelot (1900)

Complete roster: 1731–1750 · 1751–1800 · 1801–1850 · 1851–1900 · 1901–1950 · 1951–2000 · 2001–present

v · Presidents of the Royal Society

William Hyde Wollaston (1820) · Humphry Davy (1820) · Davies Gilbert (1827) · Prince Augustus Frederick (1830) · Spencer Compton (1838) · William Parsons (1848) · John Wrottesley (1854) · Benjamin Collins Brodie (1858) · Edward Sabine (1861) · George Biddell Airy (1871) · Joseph Dalton Hooker (1873) · William Spottiswoode (1878) · Thomas Henry Huxley (1883) · George Gabriel Stokes (1885) · William Thomson (1890) · Joseph Lister (1895)

Complete roster: 1600s · 1700s · 1800s · 1900s · 2000s

v · George Bellas Greenough · Henry Grey Bennet · William Blake · John MacCulloch · George Bellas Greenough · Spencer Compton · William Babington · William Buckland · John Bostock · William Fitton · Adam Sedgwick · Roderick Murchison · George Bellas Greenough · Charles Lyell · William Whewell · William Buckland · Roderick Murchison · Henry Warburton · Leonard Horner · Henry De la Beche · Charles Lyell · William Hopkins · Edward Forbes · William Hamilton · Daniel Sharpe · Joseph Ellison Portlock · John Phillips · Leonard Horner · Andrew Crombie Ramsay · William Hamilton · Warington Wilkinson Smyth · Thomas Henry Huxley · Joseph Prestwich · George Douglas Campbell · John Evans · Peter Martin Duncan · Henry Clifton Sorby · Robert Etheridge · John Whitaker Hulke · Thomas Bonney · John Wesley Judd · William Blanford · Archibald Geikie · Wilfred Hudleston · Henry Woodward · Henry Hicks · William Whitaker

20th century	Jethro Teall · Charles Lapworth · John Marr · Archibald Geikie · William Sollas · William Watts · Aubrey Strahan · Arthur Smith Woodward · Alfred Harker · George Lamplugh · Richard Oldham · Albert Seward · John Evans · Francis Bather · John Gregory · Edmund Garwood · Thomas Holland · John Green · Owen Thomas Jones · Henry Hurd Swinnerton · Percy Boswell · Herbert Leader Hawkins · William Fearnsides · Arthur Trueman · Herbert Harold Read · Cecil Tilley · Owen Thomas Jones · George Lees · William King · Walter Campbell Smith · Leonard Hawkes · James Stubblefield · Sydney Hollingworth · Oliver Bulman · Frederick Shotton · Kingsley Dunham · Thomas Neville George · William Alexander Deer · Thomas Westoll · Percy Kent · Wallace Pitcher · Percival Allen · Howel Francis · Janet Watson · Charles Holland · Bernard Leake · Derek Blundell · Anthony Harris · Charles Curtis · (Robert) Stephen Sparks · Richard Hardman · Robin Cocks

21st century	Ronald Oxburgh · Mark Moody-Stuart · Peter Styles · Richard Fortey · Lynne Frostick

Persondata
Name	Huxley, Thomas Henry
Alternative names
Short description	Biologist, evolutionist
Date of birth	4 May 1825
Place of birth	Ealing, Middlesex, England
Date of death	29 June 1895
Place of death	Eastbourne, Sussex, England

Categories:

Presidents of the Geological Society of London
1825 births
1895 deaths
19th-century English people
Academics of Imperial College London
Alumni of University College London
Biological evolution
Carcinologists
English agnostics
English anatomists
English biologists
Evolutionary biologists
Fullerian Professors of Physiology
Huxley family
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
People from Ealing
Presidents of the Royal Society
Recipients of the Copley Medal
Rectors of the University of Aberdeen
Royal Medal winners
Wollaston Medal winners
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of the London School Board
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London

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Thomas Henry Huxley — (* 4. Mai 1825 in Ealing, Middlesex; † 29. Juni 1895 in Eastbourne) war ein britischer Biologe, Bildungsorganisator und Hauptvertreter des Agnostizismus, dessen Begriff er prägte und durchsetzte. Als einflussreicher Unterstützer des Empirismus… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Thomas Henry Huxley — Huxley en una impresa de Lock Whitfield, Londres 1880 o antes. Nacimiento 4 de mayo, 1825 Ealing (Middle … Wikipedia Español
Thomas Henry Huxley — (Ealing, Reino Unido, 4 de mayo de 1825 Eastbourne, id., 29 de junio de 1895) fue un biólogo británico, apodado el bulldog de Darwin por haber sido un ferviente defensor de la Teoría de la Evolución de Charles Darwin. A pesar de haber ido sólo… … Enciclopedia Universal
Thomas Henry Huxley — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Huxley. Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 mai 1825, Ealing 29 juin … Wikipédia en Français
Thomas Henry Huxley — Томас Хаксли Изображение с фронтисписа работы Хаксли Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), на котором сопоставляются скелеты обезьян и человека. Томас Генри Хаксли (или Гексли[1]) (англ. Thomas Henry Huxley … Википедия
Thomas Henry Huxley — ➡ Huxley * * * … Universalium
Thomas Henry Huxley — noun English biologist and a leading exponent of Darwin s theory of evolution (1825 1895) • Syn: ↑Huxley, ↑Thomas Huxley • Derivationally related forms: ↑Huxleian (for: ↑Huxley), ↑Huxleyan ( … Useful english dictionary
Huxley, Thomas Henry — (1825–95) Scientist and Educator. Huxley was born in Ealing, West London, and trained as a physician. As a naval doctor, he pursued his biological studies in the South Seas and, at the early age of twenty six, he was elected a fellow of the … Who’s Who in Christianity
Huxley,Thomas Henry — Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1825 1895. British biologist who championed Darwin s theory of evolution. His works include Zoological Evidence as to Man s Place in Nature (1863) and Science and Culture (1881). * * * … Universalium
Huxley , Thomas Henry — (1825–1895) British biologist Huxley, the seventh child of a school teacher, was born in Ealing and received only two years schooling. From the age of 10 he educated himself, doing sufficiently well to be admitted to Charing Cross Hospital to… … Scientists

Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Thomas Henry Huxley

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