Huxley family

Though Huxley was a great comparative anatomist and invertebrate zoologist, perhaps his most notable scientific achievement was his work on human evolution.

Starting in 1858, Huxley gave lectures and published papers which analysed the zoological position of man.

This contained two themes: first, humans are related to the great apes, and second, the species has evolved in a similar manner to all other forms of life.

These were ideas which the careful and cautious Darwin had only hinted at in The Origin of Species, but with which Huxley was in full agreement.

The Honourable John Maler Collier OBE RP ROI (27 January 1850 – 11 April 1934) was a writer and painter in the Pre-Raphaelite style.

And "An omnipotent Deity who sentences even the vilest of his creatures to eternal torture is infinitely more cruel than the cruellest man".

By his second wife Ethel he had a daughter and a son, Sir Laurence Collier KCMG, (1890–1976), British Ambassador to Norway 1939–1950.

He painted both his wives, Marian (Mady) and Ethel; his children; both Thomas Henry Huxley and his wife; and many of the next two generations.

A biographer reports a total of thirty-two Huxley family portraits during the half-century after his marriage to Mady.

In her youth she and her sister Ethel had inspired Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) to invent doublet (now called word ladder).

A Plaque was erected in 1995 at the house in Bracknell Gardens, Hampstead[8] to commemorate Leonard, Julian and Aldous 'Men of Science and Letters, lived here.'

Leonard and his two wives and sons (Aldous and Julian) have their ashes buried in Watts Cemetery in Compton near the site of their Priorsfield home.

His master-work Evolution: The Modern Synthesis gave the name to a mid-century movement which united biological theory and overcame problems caused by over-specialisation.

His styles were iconoclasm; disenchanted social commentary and a dystopic view of the future were repeated themes.

His main works include Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Brave New World (1932) (which began as a parody of Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells), Eyeless in Gaza (1936) and Island (1960).

[10] His only child, Matthew Huxley (1920 – 10 February 2005, age 84) was also an author, as well as an educator, anthropologist and prominent epidemiologist.

He served in World War II in Africa and Iraq reaching the rank of brigade major in the British Army.

Jessie, the eldest daughter of T. H. Huxley, survived scarlet fever when two years old, a disease which had killed her brother Noel.

She grew up to marry Frederick Waller, who became architect to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral and unofficial architect-in-chief to the Huxley family.

Oriana married E. S. P. Haynes, an Eton and Balliol scholar who became a dedicated divorce law reformer.

Clare Tickell's brother, Adam, was Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Birmingham, which grew out of Mason Science College which Thomas Huxley formally opened in 1880.

Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO (25 August 1930 - 25 January 2022) was a British diplomat, academic and environmentalist.

He was Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission (1977–1980), British Ambassador to Mexico (1981–1983), Permanent Secretary of the [Overseas Development Administration] (now Department for International Development) (1984–1987), and British Ambassador to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the UN Security Council (1987–1990).

He was the president of the UK charity Tree Aid, which enables communities in Africa's drylands to fight poverty and become self-reliant, while improving the environment.

He had many interests, including climate change, population issues, conservation of biodiversity and the early history of the Earth.

The couple had five children: Marjorie (m. Sir E. J. Harding), Gervas (m. Elspeth), Michael (m. Ottille de Lotbinière Mills, 3c.

The eldest son of Henry Huxley, Gervas served in the British Army from 1914, becoming battalion bombing officer.

He received the Military Cross on the first day of Passchendaele for capturing prisoners whose presence showed the arrival of a fresh German Guards Division.

After the war he sat on the executive committee of the British Council, and became a successful author of biographies, especially on the Grosvenor family.

[19][20] Cofounders include Laura and Aldous Huxley's nephew Piero Ferrucci, his two sons, Jonathan and Emilio, and Paul Fleiss.