Thomas Henry Huxley

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Thomas Henry Huxley (photography)
Thomas Henry Huxley (1874)

Thomas Henry Huxley (born May 4, 1825 in Ealing , Middlesex , † June 29, 1895 in Eastbourne ) was a British biologist and comparative anatomist , educational organizer and main exponent of agnosticism , the term he coined and enforced. As an influential supporter of David Hume's empiricism and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution (which led to his nickname Darwin's Bulldog In addition to his own extensive research, textbooks and essays, he had a great influence on the development of the natural sciences in the 19th century.

Live and act

Thomas Henry Huxley was on May 4, 1825 as the son of a teacher in the later London belonging Ealing born. His Anglican parents George Huxley and Rachel Withers had married in 1810. Thomas Henry was their seventh child and the youngest survivor of a total of eight.

Huxley entered the practice of a brother-in-law, physician James Godwin Scott, in London in 1841 and attended lectures at Sydenham College. On October 1, 1842, he began studying medicine at Charing Cross Hospital , which he obtained in 1845 with the academic degree of a Bacc. med. from the University of London . He then worked for the Royal Navy. After a short stint at the Royal Naval Hospital in Haslar, his boss there, John Richardson, arranged for him to take part in an expedition of the HMS Rattlesnake to Torres Street from 1846 to 1850 as a ship's doctor, which enabled him to conduct extensive, highly regarded zoological research. In 1854 he was appointed professor of natural history by the London Royal School of Mines , a predecessor of today's Imperial College .

Thomas Henry Huxley (1891)

From 1855 to 1858 he was a John Fuller Professorship in Physiology at the Royal Institution of Great Britain . On June 30, 1860, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the so-called " Huxley-Wilberforce Debate " about Charles Darwin's work The Origin of Species took place , in which Huxley later had a widely received argument with Samuel Wilberforce , Bishop from Oxford, delivered.

His best-known and at the time most controversial essay book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863) was the starting point of the popular social dispute as to whether humans were descended from apes or not. In 1869 he founded the journal Nature together with other followers of Darwin's teachings .

From 1863 to 1869 he taught as a " Hunterian Professor" at the Royal College of Surgeons of England .

In 1868, Huxley coined the term Wallace Line , the biogeographical dividing line between Asian and Australian flora and fauna . In the same year he described the substance Bathybius , which he considered to be a primitive living being, which later turned out to be an error. In the zoological system he founded the taxon of the cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), a class of vertebrates (Vertebrata).

His essays earned him the reputation of being one of the greatest stylists in the English language. His imaginative endeavors to popularize the thoughts of his friend Darwin consisted, among other things, in wrapping them in dialogue stories that used language that ordinary people could understand. He and his colleagues pushed through the new basic orientation in British society, instead of focusing on spiritual authorities , classics and office patronage, a more modern understanding of empirically founded natural science and professionalism.

Huxley died on his estate "Hodeslea" near Eastbourne . Huxley is the father of Leonard Huxley and the grandfather of three well-known brothers: the biologist and UNESCO Secretary General Julian Huxley , the writer Aldous Huxley and the human medicine scientist Andrew Fielding Huxley .

Honors

At the age of 25, he was on 5 June 1851 a member of the Royal Society elected him the 1852 Royal Medal , 1888, the Copley Medal , and in 1894, the Darwin Medal awarded. From 1883 to 1885 he was President of the Royal Society. In 1857 the German Academy of Sciences appointed Leopoldina Huxley to its member. In 1862 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . From 1864 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg and from 1865 of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1869 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society . In 1876 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1880 he received the Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales , in 1883 Huxley was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences , in 1890 he received the Linné Medal of the Linnean Society . From 1878 he was a foreign member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome and from 1879 a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences in Paris. He was also a member of the X Club .

The Huxley Line was named after him, a major modification of the Wallace Line , the biogeographical dividing line between Asian and Filipino flora and fauna .

The Huxley Crater on the Moon and the Huxley Crater on Mars were both named after him in 1973. The Mount Huxley in Tasmania bears his name. Frederick Daniel Dyster named the genus Huxleya, which belongs to the moss animals, in his honor in 1858 .

The layer of the inner hair root sheath , which he described in 1845, is named after Huxley .

Fonts (selection)

Caricature by Carlo Pellegrini
  • The Oceanic Hydrozoa . London 1859 ( online ).
  • Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature . London 1863 ( online ).
  • On Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature. Six Lectures to Working Men . London 1863 ( online ).
  • Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy . London 1864 ( online ).
  • Lessons in Elementary Physiology. London 1866 ( online ).
  • A Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals . London 1871 ( online ).
  • A Course of Practical Instruction in Elementary Biology . London 1875 - with H. Newell Martin ( online ).
  • Physiography: An Introduction to the Study of Nature . London 1877 ( online ).
  • A Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals . London 1877 ( online ).
  • The Crayfish: An Introduction to the Study of Zoology . London 1879 ( online ).
  • On the application of the laws of evolution to the arrangement of the Vertebrata and more particularly of the Mammalia. In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 43, 1880, pp. 649-662
  • Introductory Science Primer . London 1880 ( online ).
  • Collected essays . 9 volumes, London 1893–1894
    • Volume 1: Method and Results . Full text .
    • Volume 2: Darwiniana . Full text .
    • Volume 3: Science and Education . Full text .
    • Volume 4: Science and Hebrew Tradition . Full text .
    • Volume 5: Science and Christian Tradition . Full text .
    • Volume 6: Hume, with Helps to the Study of Berkeley . Full text .
    • Volume 7: Man's Place in Nature . Full text .
    • Volume 8: Discourses, Biological and Geological . Full text .
    • Volume 9: Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays . Full text .
      • originally published as:
        • Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews . London 1870 ( online ).
        • Critiques and Addresses . London 1873 ( online ).
        • American Addresses . London 1877 ( online ).
        • Science and Culture . London 1882 ( online ).
        • Social Diseases and Worse Remedies . London 1891
        • Essays upon Some Controverted Questions . London 1892 ( online ).
  • Michael Foster (Ed.): The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley . 5 volumes, London 1898–1903
  • Julian Huxley (Ed.): TH Huxley's Diary of the Voyage of HMS Rattlesnake . London 1935

literature

General literature

  • Gerhard Heberer : Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), Charles Lyell (1797–1875), Carl Vogt (1817–1895), Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919). Introduction to Thomas Henry Huxley: Testimonies to the position of man in nature . Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart 1963, p. 1-53 .
  • Leonard Huxley (Ed.): Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley . 3 volumes, London 1900. 3rd edition. Macmillan, London 1908 (Available online: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 ).
  • Ilse Jahn : Thomas Henry Huxley . In: Ilse Jahn (Ed.): History of Biology: Theories, Methods, Institutions, Short Biographies, with the help of Erika Krauße, edited by 21 specialists . 2nd, corrected special edition of the 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Spectrum, Heidelberg / Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8274-1023-1 , p. 860 .
  • Reinhard Hildebrand: Rudolf Albert Koelliker and his scientific contacts abroad. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 101–115; here: p. 105.

further reading

Web links

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Wikisource: Thomas Henry Huxley  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Heberer 1963, p. 3
  2. ↑ L. Huxley 1908, Volume 1, p. 1
  3. ↑ L. Huxley 1908, Volume 1, p. 23
  4. ↑ L. Huxley 1908, Volume 1, p. 29
  5. ↑ a b c Jahn 2002
  6. ^ Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach : Huxley, Thomas Henry. In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 646.
  7. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 121.
  8. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Thomas Henry Huxley. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 17, 2015 .
  9. ^ Member History: Thomas H. Huxley. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  10. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1850–1899 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015
  11. ↑ Thomas Henry Huxley in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
  12. ^ Notes on two New British Polyzoa . In: Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Sciences . Volume 6, Number 1, 1858, pp. 260-261 ( online ).
  13. ^ Thomas Henry Huxley: On a hitherto undescribed structure in the human hair sheath. In: London med. Gaz. Volume 36, 1845, pp. 1340 f.
  14. ↑ Reinhard Hildebrand (1984), p. 105.
personal data
SURNAME Huxley, Thomas Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English biologist, educational organizer and main proponent of agnosticism
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Ealing , Middlesex
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1895
Place of death Eastbourne , Sussex