Thomas William Bridge (5 November 1848 – 29/30 June 1909) was a British zoologist who studied fish, and was particularly known for his research on the swim bladder in Siluridae.
After working in Cambridge (1869–79), he held professorships at the Royal College of Science for Ireland (1879–80) and Mason College/University of Birmingham (1880–1909).
[2][3][6] Bridge held the chair in biology (1880–82) and was later the Mason Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (1882–1909), retaining the title when the college was subsumed into the University of Birmingham in 1900.
[1][2][7][8] With A. C. Haddon, he investigated a hundred species of Siluroid fish, and concluded that the air bladder was used to perceive changes in hydrostatic pressure rather than being involved in hearing, as had been proposed by Ernst Heinrich Weber (who had first described the interconnected structures in 1820).
[7] He contributed a comprehensive article on the fishes to volume 7 of The Cambridge Natural History (1904),[2][3][7] which Sidney Harmer describes in his Royal Society obituary as a "most valuable summary of a very difficult subject".