Julian huxley biography

Cancel Report. Create a new account. Log In. Browse Biographies. Quiz Are you a biography pro? A John Adams. Huxley and brother to Brave New World author Aldous, Julian was another member of the Huxley family who made significant contributions to human understanding of the world around us. A passionate naturalist, Huxley strove to bring the natural world closer to all humankind, and to improve our education in and understanding of the biological and cultural wonders in the world around us.

His passion for biological studies grew, and in he took up a place to study zoology at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating with first class honours, the next few years saw him teach, study and write all across the world. He spent time in the United States and Germany, as julian huxley biography as assisting with the British war effort during the First World War as an intelligence officer in Northern Italy.

The end of the war saw Huxley return to the UK to take up posts in university zoology departments. Co-authored with H. Wells and his son, The Science Of Life aimed to introduce biological and ecological concepts to a popular readership, discussing such topics as animal classification, the history of evolution and even how biology overlaps with morality.

This rather grudging acceptance of sexual selection was influenced by his studies on the courtship of the Great Crested Grebe and other birds that pair for life : the courtship takes place mostly after mate selection, not before. His role was that of a synthesiser, and it helped that he had met many of the other participants. His book Evolution: the modern synthesis was written whilst he was Secretary to the Zoological Society, and made use of his remarkable collection of reprints covering the first part of the century.

It was published in Reviews of the book in learned journals were little short of ecstatic; the American Naturalist called it "The outstanding evolutionary treatise of the decade, perhaps of the century. The approach is thoroughly scientific; the command of basic information amazing". Haldane, Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. However, at the time of Huxley's book several of these had yet to make their distinctive contribution.

Certainly, for Huxley, E. Ford and his co-workers in ecological genetics were at least as important; and Cyril Darlington, the chromosome expert, was a notable source of facts and ideas. An analysis of the 'authorities cited' index of Evolution the modern synthesis shows indirectly those whom Huxley regarded as the most important contributors to the synthesis up to the book was published inand references go up to Huxley, Muller, Rensch, Turrill, Wright.

This list contains a few surprises. Goldschmidt was an influential geneticist who advocated evolution by saltation, and was sometimes mentioned in disagreement. Turrill provided Huxley with botanical information. The list omits three key members of the synthesis who are listed above: Mayr, Stebbins the botanist and Simpson the palaeontologist. Mayr gets 16 citations and more in the two later editions; all three published outstanding and relevant books some years later, and their contribution to the synthesis is unquestionable.

Their lesser weight in Huxley's citations was caused by the early publication date of his book. Huxley's book is not strong in palaeontology, which illustrates perfectly why Simpson's later works were such an important contribution. This cline is an example of a ring species. Some of Huxley's last contributions to the evolutionary synthesis were on the subject of ecological genetics.

He noted how surprisingly widespread polymorphism is in nature, with visible morphism much more prevalent in some groups than others. The immense diversity of colour and pattern in small bivalve julians huxley biography, brittlestars, sea-anemones, tubicular polychaetes and various grasshoppers is perhaps maintained by making recognition by predators more difficult.

Progress without a goal was one of his phrases, to distinguish his point of view from classical Aristotelian teleology. I believe this reasoning to be totally false. Cladists, for example, were and are strongly against any suggestion that a group could be scientifically described as 'advanced' and others as 'primitive'. For them, and especially for the radical group of transformed cladists, there is no such thing as an advanced group, they are derived or apomorphic.

Primitive groups are plesiomorphic. Ironically, it was Huxley who invented the terms clade and grades. On this issue Julian was at the opposite end of the spectrum from his grandfather, who was, at least for the first half of his career, a propagandist for 'persistent types', getting close to denying any advances at all.

Julian huxley biography: Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS (22

In the final chapter of his Evolution the modern synthesis he defines evolutionary progress as "a raising of the upper level of biological efficiency, this being defined as increased julian huxley biography over and independence of the environment,"[51] Evolution in action discusses evolutionary progress at length: "Natural selection plus time produces biological improvement Darwin was not afraid to use the word for the results of natural selection in general I believe that improvement can become one of the key concepts in evolutionary biology.

Improvements in biological machinery The eyes of a dragon-fly, which can see all round [it] in every direction, are an improvement over the mere microscopic eye-spots of early forms of life. Lower forms manage to survive alongside higher". He addresses the topic of 'persistent types' living fossils later in the same book pp —8. Of course, pre-Darwin, it was believed without question that Man stood at the head of a pyramid scala naturae.

The matter is not so simple with evolution by natural selection; Darwin's own opinion varied from time to time. In the Origin he wrote "And as natural selection works by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection". It is merely compatible with the theory that this might happen.

Other evolutionary biologists have had similar thoughts to Huxley: G. Ledyard Stebbins[56] and Bernhard Rensch[57], for example. The term used to describe progressive evolution is anagenesis, though this term does not necessarily include the idea of improvement. The objective description of complexity was one of the issues addressed by cybernetics in the s.

The idea that advanced machines including living beings could exert more control over their environments and operate in a wider range of situations perhaps serves as a basis for making the terms such as 'advanced' amenable to more exact definition. Huxley's humanism[62] came from his appreciation that mankind was in charge of its own destiny at least in principleand this raised the need for a sense of direction and a system of ethics.

His grandfather T. Huxley, when faced with similar problems, had promoted agnosticism, but Julian chose humanism as being more directed to supplying a basis for ethics. Julian's thinking went along these lines: "The critical point in the evolution of man Man's development is potentially open He has developed a new method of evolution: the transmission of organized experience by way of tradition, which Huxley had a close association with the British rationalist and secular humanist movements.

He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from until his death, and on the formation of the British Humanist Association in became its first President, to be succeeded by AJ Ayer in He was also closely involved with the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Many of Huxley's books address humanist themes. Huxley wrote that "There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution.

There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; I believe that [a] drastic reorganization of our pattern of religious thought is now becoming necessary, from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered pattern". This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct something to take its place.

Julian huxley biography: Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS

Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society,[67] and was Vice-President — and President — He thought eugenics was important for removing undesirable variants from the human gene pool; but at least after World War II he believed race was a meaningless concept in biology, and its application to humans was highly inconsistent.

Huxley was an outspoken critic of the most extreme eugenicism in the s and s the stimulus for which was the greater fertility of the 'feckless' poor compared to the 'responsible' prosperous classes. He was, nevertheless, a leading figure in the eugenics movement see, for example, Eugenics manifesto. He gave the Galton memorial lecture twice, in and In his writing he used this argument several times: no-one doubts the wisdom of managing the germ-plasm of agricultural stocks, so why not apply the same concept to human stocks?

Huxley was one of many intellectuals at the time who believed that the lowest class in society was genetically inferior. This passage, fromputs the view forcefully:. Here, he does not demean the working class in julian huxley biography, but aims for "the virtual elimination of the few lowest and most degenerate types". Castle, C.

Davenport, H. Muller are examplesand by other prominent intellectuals. Concerning a public health and racial policy in general, Huxley wrote that " In the opinion of Duvall, "His views fell well within the spectrum of opinion acceptable to the English liberal intellectual elite. He shared Nature's enthusiasm for birth control, and 'voluntary' sterilization.

Towards the end of his life Huxley himself must have recognised how unpopular these views became after the end of World War II. In the two volumes of his autobiography there is no mention of eugenics in the index, nor is Galton mentioned; and the subject has also been omitted from many of the obituaries and biographies. An exception is the proceedings of a conference organised by the British Eugenics Society.

In response to the rise of European fascism in the s he was asked to write We Europeans with the ethnologist A. Huxley suggested the word 'race' be replaced with ethnic group. Human races can be and have been differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows: The Mongoloid Division; The Negroid Division; The Caucasoid Division.

In Huxley coined the term "transhumanism" to describe the view that man should better himself through science and technology, possibly including eugenics, but also, importantly, the improvement of the social environment. Huxley was always able to write well, and was ever willing to address the public on scientific topics. Well over half his books are addressed to an educated general audience, and he wrote often in periodicals and newspapers.

The most extensive bibliography of Huxley lists some of these ephemeral articles, though there are others unrecorded. These articles, some reissued as Essays of a biologistprobably led to the invitation from H. Wells to help write a comprehensive work on biology for a general readership, The Science of Life. Of this Robert Olby said "Book IV The essence of the controversies about evolution offers perhaps the clearest, most readable, succinct and informative popular account of the subject ever penned.

It was here that he first expounded his own version of what later developed into the evolutionary synthesis". In Huxley collaborated with the naturalist Ronald Lockley to create for Alexander Korda the world's first natural history documentary The Private Life of the Gannets. For the film, shot with the support of the Royal Navy around Grassholm off the Pembrokeshire coast, they won an Oscar for best documentary.

Huxley had given talks on the radio since the s, followed by written versions in The Listener. In later life, he became known to an even wider audience through television. In the BBC asked him to be a regular panelist on a Home Service general knowledge show, The Brains Trust, in which he and other panelists were asked to discuss questions submitted by listeners.

Inafter a summer in GermanyHuxley took his place at Oxford University, where he developed a particular interest in embryology and protozoa. In the autumn term of his final year,his mother died from cancer. InHuxley graduated from Oxford with first class honors, and was offered the Naples scholarship. He spent a year at the Naples Marine Biological Station where he developed his interest in embryology and development by researching sea squirts and sea urchins.

Huxley accepted this position and began the following year. Before taking up the post at the Rice Institute, Huxley spent a year in Germany preparing for his demanding new julian huxley biography. Working in a laboratory just months before the outbreak of World War IHuxley overheard fellow academics comment on a passing aircraft, "it will not be long before those planes are flying over England," cementing Huxley's strong internationalist political views.

While in Germany, Huxley had a nervous breakdown and returned to England to rest in a nursing home. At the same time his brother Trev, two years junior, also had a breakdown, and hanged himself. He was then offered a fellowship at New College, Oxford, which had lost of its many staff and students to the war. Wells and his son G. Wells on The Science of Life.

Bird watching in childhood gave Huxley his interest in ornithology, and throughout his life he helped devise systems for the surveying and conservation of birds ; and wrote several papers on avian behavior.

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His research interests also included medicine and the novel field of molecular biology. He was a friend and mentor of the biologist and Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz. InHuxley visited the USSR where he admired the results of social and economic planning on a large scale. This is somewhat remarkable given that history has revealed this time of industrial strength under Stalin to be quite tumultuous when it came to human rights.

Collectivization attempts had been very violent, involving the deportation and eventual deaths in camps of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and were followed by a devastating famine in Ukraine. When Huxley returned to the United Kingdom, he became a founding member of the think tank Political and Economic Planning. InHuxley was appointed secretary to the Zoological Society of London, and spent much of the next seven years running the society and its zoological gardens, London Zoo and Whipsnade Park, alongside his zoological research.

InHuxley was invited to the United States on a lecturing tour, and generated some controversy after stating that he believed the United States should join World War II a few weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Because of the country's joining the war, his lecture tour was extended and the council of the Zoological Society, who were uneasy with their secretary, used this as an excuse to remove him from his post.

Huxley seized this opportunity to dedicate much of the rest of his life to science popularization and political issues.