Huxley, THOMAS HENRY, biologist, born at Ealing, Middlesex, 4th May 1825, commenced his education at the school in that place, then a small village, and afterwards studied medicine in the Medical School of Charing Cross Hospital. In 1846 he entered the medical service of the royal navy, and did duty at Haslar, until the winter of the same year, under the late Sir John Richardson, by whose influence he was appointed assistant-surgeon of H.M.S. Rattlesnake. This vessel, commanded by Captain Owen Stanley, was commissioned to survey the intricate passage within the Barrier Reef skirting the eastern shores of Australia, and to explore the sea lying between the northern end of that reef and New Guinea. Huxley devoted himself with zeal to the study of the numerous marine animals collected during the survey, and made them the subjects of scientific papers, which were published by the Royal and Linnean societies. Towards the end of 1850 the Rattlesnake returned to England, and Huxley had the gratification to find that his paper On the Anatomy and Affinities of the Family of the Medusæ had been published in the Philosophical Transactions. In 1851 Huxley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; in 1852 one of the two Royal medals annually given by the Society was awarded to him; and in 1853 he contributed to the Society's Transactions a memoir on the morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca. In 1854 he was appointed professor of Natural History, including Palæontology, in the Royal School of Mines in place of Professor Edward Forbes, and held that office, combined with the curatorship of the fossil collections in the Museum of Practical Geology, until his retirement from the public service in 1885. It was part of the duty of the professor to deliver a course of six lectures to working-men every alternate year. Some of these have been published. In 1854 he published contributions to the anatomy of the Brachiopoda, in which some hitherto unsuspected peculiarities of their structure were described; and in this and the preceding year he wrote several essays on histological subjects. In 1856 he accompanied his friend Dr Tyndall in his first visit to the glaciers of the Alps, and his name appears as joint-author of a paper, Observations on Glaciers (Phil. Trans. 1857). In 1859 his large work on The Oceanic Hydrozoa; a Description of the Calycophoridae and Physophoridae observed during his voyage, was published by the Ray Society with illustrative plates. After his appointment to the Royal School of Mines, Huxley's attention was chiefly directed to vertebrate morphology and to palæontology, with occasional excursions into the region of ethnology; but papers on the agamic reproduction and morphology of Aphis (1858), on the development of Piprosoma (1860), a manual of the Invertebrata (1877), and classification and distribution of Crayfishes (1878) are evidence that the Invertebrata were not neglected. In vertebrate morphology the most important papers are the Royal Society's Croonian lecture, On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull (1858); various papers on the brain in man and apes, and on the relation of man to the lower animals, and Man's Place in Nature (1860-63); on the classification of Birds, and on the Dinosauria (1868-70); the article 'Amphibia' in Encyc. Britannica (1875); On Ceratodus (1876); the cranial and dental structure of the Canidae (1880); Lectures on Comparative Anatomy (1864); An Introduction to the Classification of Animals (1869). In palæontology, besides various papers on other fossil Invertebrata, memoirs on Pterygotus (1858) and Belemnites (1864); a series of papers on Steganolepis Robertsoni and Hyperodapedon Gordoni (1859-77-87); preliminary essay and descriptions of Fossil Fishes in the Decades of the Geological Survey (1862); Glyptodon (1863); Neanderthal Skull (1864); Reptilian Remains from India (1864); Telertpeton (1866); Amphibia from the Kilkenny Coal-measures (1867-71); Hypsilophodon and Evidences of Affinity between Reptiles and Birds (1869-70); Chelonia from Lord Howe Island (1887). In physiology, a short treatise, Lessons in Elementary Physiology. Essays on topics of a philosophical and general character are collected in Lay Sermons, &c. (1870); Critiques and Addresses (1873); American Addresses and Physiography (1877); a short work on Home (1879); Science and Culture (1881); and Science and Hebrew Tradition (1894). His collected essays, with an autobiography, were issued in 9 volumes in 1893-95. A member of the Privy Council since 1892, he died at Eastbourne, 29th June 1895. His son Leonard wrote his Life and Letters (2 vols. 1900).
Huxley strongly advocated and greatly furthered Darwin's views and evolutionist doctrines in general, and was a keen and incisive critic of what he regarded as obscurantist theological prejudices. He held the offices of examiner in the university of London, of Fullerian professor at the Royal Institution, of Hunterian professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, of president of the Ethnological Society and of the British Association. He was secretary and president of the Geological Society, and secretary and president of the Royal Society. He was elected in 1873 Lord Rector of the university of Aberdeen, and a member of the London School Board in 1870. He was an active member of the Royal Commission on Sea-fisheries (1864-66), and served on several other commissions; and he was inspector of Salmon-fisheries from 1881 to 1885. He received the Wollaston medal, the Copley medal, and a Swedish order. Honorary degrees were conferred on him by Oxford, Cambridge, Würzburg, Brussels, Bologna, Breslau, Edinburgh, and Dublin. He was a foreign or corresponding member of the American, Brussels, Berlin, and French academies.