Licence: In copyright
Credit: Thomas H. Huxley / by J.R. Ainsworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![Thomas Henry Huxley CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE AND TRAINING [l825-45]. Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing on May 4, 1825, his father, George Huxley, being senior master in the well-known semi-public school of which Dr. Nicholas was then the head. Under the older name of Hodesleia the family can be traced back in Cheshire to the tune of Richard I., but there is nothing in its annals foreshadowing the extraordinary eminence attained during the last half of the nineteenth century by its best known representative. So far as our information goes, Huxley was decidedly a sport—as he himself described the great Newton—a concrete illustration of the biological fact that variations of large amount may from time to time occur. To the first volume of his Collected Essays, issued in 1893, Huxley prefixed a short Autobiography, originally written for another purpose, in which the bulk of his physical and mental characteristics are ascribed to inheri- tance from his mother. As to the former, he was tall, dark, and rather spare, with a commanding presence, and a striking though not handsome countenance, chiefly remarkable for breadth of forehead, prominence of chin, and a profusion of long straight hair. Huxley's most salient mental characteristics were absolute sincerity and A](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21982740_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
