Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) was an English biologist, educator and essayist. Largely self-taught, he trained in medicine and served as assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake, studying marine animals off Australia and New Guinea. He became professor of natural history at the Royal School of Mines and an outspoken defender of Darwin's theory, famously debating Bishop Samuel Wilberforce at Oxford in 1860, and he applied evolution to humans in Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863). He coined the word "agnostic," campaigned for scientific education, and was the grandfather of Julian and Aldous Huxley.