Fison was educated at a school at Sheffield, then at the University of Cambridge where he read with a tutor before becoming a student of Caius College in June 1855.

In 1856 Fison arrived in Australia and while at the gold diggings the news of the unexpected death of his father led to his conversion to active Christianity.

His honesty, kindliness, tact and commonsense were appreciated alike by government officials, white settlers, and the natives themselves.

When Fison returned to Australia in 1871 he began investigating similar problems in connexion with the aborigines.

This led to his becoming acquainted with Alfred William Howitt, with whom he was afterwards to do a great deal of worthwhile work in Australian anthropology.

He published a life of Christ, Ai Tukutuku Kei Jisu, and also wrote a valuable pamphlet on the native system of land tenure in Fiji.

At the meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science held at Hobart in 1892 he was president of the anthropological section, and from the chair, with charming candour, pointed out that a theory of the Kurnai system, which he had worked out with infinite pains in Kamilaroi and Kurnai, was "not worth a rush".