Sir Julian Huxley | |
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Julian Huxley c. 1964
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Born | Julian Sorell Huxley 22 June 1887 London, England |
Died |
14 February 1975 (aged 87) London, England |
Residence | United Kingdom |
Nationality | British |
Fields | Evolutionary biology |
Institutions | Rice Institute, Oxford University, Kings College London, Zoological Society, UNESCO |
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
Known for | Modern evolutionary synthesis, Humanism, UNESCO, Conservation, Eugenics |
Influences | T. H. Huxley, W. G. (Piggy) Hill |
Influenced | E. B. Ford, Gavin de Beer, Aldous Huxley |
Notable awards | Kalinga Prize (1953) Darwin Medal Darwin-Wallace Medal (Silver, 1958) Lasker Award |
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was a British evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern evolutionary synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund and the first President of the British Humanist Association.
Huxley was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He directed an Oscar-winning wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was also knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced the theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society and its president from 1959–1962.