Huxley family

The Huxley family is a British family of which several members have excelled in science, medicine, arts, and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.

The patriarch of the family was the zoologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) (referred to here as THH). THH's grandsons include Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and Doors of Perception, his brother Julian Huxley, evolutionist and first director of UNESCO, and Nobel laureate physiologist Andrew Huxley.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Mostly a self-educated man, he had an extraordinary influence on the British educated public. He was instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, and opposed those Christian leaders who tried to stifle scientific debate. He was a member of eight Royal Commissions and two other commissions. A noted unbeliever, he used the term "agnostic" to describe his attitude to theism.

Though Huxley was a great comparative anatomist and invertebrate zoologist, perhaps his most notable scientific achievement was his work on human evolution. Starting in 1858, Huxley gave lectures and published papers which analysed the zoological position of man. The best were collected in a landmark work: Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863). This contained two themes: first, humans are related to the great apes, and second, the species has evolved in a similar manner to all other forms of life. These were ideas which the careful and cautious Darwin had only hinted at in The Origin of Species, but with which Huxley was in full agreement.

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