| abstract | - Professor Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 - 29 June 1895) was a biologist. Born in Ealing, his father was a mathematics teacher at Ealing School until it closed, putting the family into financial difficulties. As a result, Thomas left school at age 10, after only two years of formal schooling. He was therefore self-educated until he was admitted to study at Charing Cross Hospital, where he obtained a small scholarship. At twenty he passed his First M.B. examination at the University of London. However, he did not present himself for the final (2nd M.B.) exams and consequently did not qualify with a university degree. Instead he joined the Royal Navy and was made Assistant Surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake, about to start for a voyage of discovery and surveying to New Guinea and Australia. The Rattlesnake left England on 3 December 1846 and, once they had arrived in the southern hemisphere, Huxley devoted his time to the study of marine invertebrates. Huxley's resulting paper "On the anatomy and the affinities of the family of Medusae" was published in 1849 by the Royal Society in its Philosophical Transactions. Huxley resigned from the navy in 1854 and became Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines and naturalist to the British Geological Survey in the following year. In 1868 Huxley became principal of the South London Working Men's College in Blackfriars Road. In November 1870 he was elected onto the London School Board, resigning in 1872. He retired in 1885 and in 1890 moved from London to Eastbourne, dying there in 1895. He was buried in North London at St Marylebone Cemetery, East Finchley. Wikipedia page [1] refers. The BBC page is [2].
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