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Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth-century modern 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, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959–…
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culture · English biologist and philosopher (1887–1975) · evolutionary biologist · ethologist · writer · professor · philosopher · physiologist · biologist · film director · botanical collector · zoologist · also Julian Huxley, Huxley
Born 22 June 1887 · Died 14 February 1975 · Q243419
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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-centred pattern.
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“...unless [civilised societies] invent and enforce adequate measures for regulating human reproduction, for controlling the quantity of population, and at least preventing the deterioration of quality of racial stock, they are doomed to decay ...”
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“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-centred pattern.”
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Died 1975-02-14.
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Won Frink Medal (1973).
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Won Godman-Salvin Medal (1971).
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“Huxley gives the outline of what he believes future humanity could—and should—look like. By pointing out the numerous limitations and feebleness the human nature is—at the time—prone to, and by confronting them with the possibilities humankind has, Huxley expresses the need to research and put into use all possible measures that would enable man achieve utmost perfection.”
Became its first President, to be succeeded by A
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Awarded Humanist of the Year (1962).
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Huxley accepted the American Humanist Association's annual "Humanist of the Year" award
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Won Darwin–Wallace Medal (1958).
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Huxley popularized the term transhumanism for the view that humans should better themselves through science and technology, possibly including eugenics, but also, importantly, the improvement of the social environment
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Won Darwin Medal (1956).
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Received a Special Award from the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population
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And the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958
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Awarded Kalinga Prize (1953).
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The Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958
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Huxley wrote the foreword to Donovan Rawcliffe's The Psychology of the Occult
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Published “A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve” in The Journal of Physiology — cited 17,824 times.
Career landmark: Director-General of UNESCO (1946–1948).
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Huxley proposed to melt the polar ice caps by igniting atomic bombs to moderate the world climate in the northern hemisphere, and permit shipping across the top of the world
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“Summarizes research on all topics relevant to the modern synthesis of evolution and Mendelian genetics up to the Second World War.”
Was asked by the British government to join the Colonial Commission on Higher Education
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Huxley was invited to the United States on a lecturing tour, and generated some controversy by saying that he thought the United States should join World War II: a few weeks later came the attack on Pearl Harbor
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Vavilov was tried, found guilty of 'sabotage' and sentenced to death
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The leading botanical geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested, and Lysenko replaced him as director of the Institute of Genetics
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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
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“...this multi-author volume, edited by Huxley, is one of the foundation stones of the 'modern synthesis', with essays on taxonomy, evolution, natural selection, Mendelian genetics and population genetics.”
To refer to species whose members fall into a series of sub-species with continuous change in characters over a geographical area
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Came three lengthy reviews on major evolutionary topics
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Awarded Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (1937).
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Huxley was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Rare Animals and the Disappearance of Wild Life
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Published a long and significant paper for the British Association
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Huxley narrated the nutrition film Enough to Eat
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Huxley was appointed secretary to the Zoological Society of London, and spent much of the next seven years running the society and its zoological gardens, the London Zoo and Whipsnade Park, alongside his writing and rese
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Joined the International Institute for Psychical Research but resigned after a few months due to its members' spiritualist bias and non-scientific approach to the subject
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Huxley published If I Were Dictator, a collection of essays outlining his personal views on social and political reform
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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
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Was one of eleven people involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organisation for the study of birds in the British Isles
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Huxley visited the USSR at the invitation of Intourist, where initially he admired the results of social and economic planning on a large scale
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Reprinted 1934, 1937, popular edition, fully revised, 1938
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After finishing work on The Science of Life, Huxley visited East Africa to advise the Colonial Office on education in British East Africa (for the most part Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika)
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Huxley moved to King's College London as Professor of Zoology, but in 1927, to the amazement of his colleagues and on the prodding of H
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Huxley married Juliette Baillot (1896–1994) a French Swiss woman whom he had met while she was employed as a governess at Garsington Manor, the country house of Lady Ottoline Morrell
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During 1913 the relationship broke down and Huxley had a nervous breakdown which a biographer described as caused by 'conflict between desire and guilt'.
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“The Individual in the Animal Kingdom”
Huxley was asked by Edgar Odell Lovett to set up the Department of Biology at the newly created Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas, which he accepted, planning to start the following year
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His father married Rosalind Bruce, who was the same age as Julian, and he later acquired half-brothers Andrew Huxley and David Huxley
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Huxley became informally engaged to Kathleen Fordham, whom he had met some years earlier when she was a pupil at Prior's Field, Compton, the school his mother had founded and run
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Was appointed as Demonstrator in the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Oxford, and started on the systematic observation of the courtship habits of water birds, such as the common reds
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Graduated with first-class honours, and spent that July at the international gathering for the centenary of Darwin's birth, held at the University of Cambridge
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Huxley won a scholarship in Zoology to Balliol College, Oxford and took up the place in 1906 after spending the summer in Germany
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Born 1887-06-22.
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Huxley was born on 22 June 1887, at the London house of his aunt.
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And they had four children: Margaret (1899–1981), the novelist Aldous, Trevenen and Julian
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