Huxley

Huxley, Right Hon. Thomas Henry, was born in 1825. He became a student at the Charing Cross Hospital, and, having qualified, entered the Navy as assistant surgeon in 1846. His first zoological work was clone in the Rattlesnake, engaged in the survey of the Great Barrier Reef, and the result of his investigations were published, in the Philosophical Transactions, by the Linneean Society, and in the Ray Society volume on the Oceanic Hydrozoa.

In 1851 he was elected F.R.S., and three years later became Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, and curator of the Museum of Practical Geology, and held these offices till 1885, when he retired into private life. As a biological teiclier, Professor Huxley was from the first on the side of evolution. His scientific writings were very numerous; the most important of them are his Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals (1871), Anatomy of Invevtebrated Animals (1877), the Crayfish, an Introduction to the Study of Zoology (1878), and in the front rank of the scientific work of the century stand his Classification of Birds, and many of his papers in the Journals or Transactions of the various learned societies. Of a less technical character are Man's Place in Nature (1860-63), Lay Sermons (1870), Critiques and Addresses (1873), and American Addresses (1877). His little book on Hume is one of many proofs of his ability in philosophy proper. His Essays on Controverted Subjects (1892), with some others not collected, were originally addressed to magazine readers, and his destructive criticism of General Booth's "Darkest England" Scheme appeared in the Times (1890). Professor Huxley was examiner in the London University, and was chosen chairman of the association for making it a professorial university in Dec, 1892; Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution, Hunterian Professor at the College of Surgeons, President of the Royal, Geological, and Ethnological Societies, and of the British Association, Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, a Royal Commissioner on Sea-fisheries, and an Inspector of Salmon Fisheries (1881-85). He received the Copley and Wollaston gold medals, and one from the Royal Society of New South Wales. Oxford, Cambridge, E Unbcirgh and Dublin, and several foreign universities, conferred honorary degrees on him, and he was a fellow or corresponding member of the principal learned societies at hocn3 and abroad. He was made a Privy Councillor in August, 1892. He died in 1895.