Thomas Henry Huxley was born on May 4, 1825 in Middlesex county near London, England. After only 2 years of formal education he was forced to leave school at age 10 when the school in which his father was a mathematics teacher closed down. He subsequently decided to educate himself by extensive reading, eventually learning German, Latin, and some ancient Greek. At age 16, Thomas entered an anatomy school, Sydenham College, and a year later, after winning the silver medal in the Apothecaries’ yearly competition, was admitted to Charing Cross Hospital, where he was taught by Thomas Wharton Jones, Professor of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery at University College London.
In December 1846, he joined the Navy, serving as a marine naturalist, and boarded the HMS Rattlesnake, bound for New Guinea and Australia. During the voyage he studied marine invertebrates extensively and sent his detailed notes in a manuscript titled “On the anatomy and the affinities of the family of Medusae” that was published in 1849 by the Royal Society in its Philosophical Transactions. On his return to England in 1850, he was recognized as a leading authority in this field and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Huxley retired from the Navy in July 1854 and became Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines and subsequently naturalist to the British Geological Survey in the following year. A series of honors and positions followed as his reputation spread, culminating in his election to the American Philosophical Society in 1869.
Reflecting his unrelenting struggle to raise his knowledge to the next level, he once asserted: The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
