Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing

The Reverend Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing FRS FLS (6 February 1835, London – 8 July 1926, Royal Tunbridge Wells) was a British zoologist, who described himself as "a serf to natural history, principally employed about Crustacea".

[5] By 1863, Stebbing had begun to work as a tutor in Reigate, Surrey, where he met the entomologist William Wilson Saunders, whose daughter Mary Anne was a capable botanist and illustrator.

[2] The couple moved to Torquay, Devon after their marriage, where Stebbing continued to work as a tutor and schoolmaster, and began to write about theology, Darwinism and natural history, partly under the influence of the naturalist William Pengelly.

[1] Having trained as an evangelical Anglican, Stebbing expected to be a staunch opponent of Charles Darwin's recently published theory of evolution by natural selection.

[5] Stebbing reported that "on reading The Origin of Species, as a preliminary, it has to be confessed that, instead of confuting, I became his ardent disciple", and so he adopted the position of a religious rationalist.

[4][1] Stebbing wrote a number of essays on the topic of Darwinism, in which he dissected the argument posited against it, and questioned various aspects of Christianity,[5] including the literal truth of the Book of Genesis, the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, many of the Thirty-Nine Articles, miracles and prophecy.

[2] He also produced a monograph of the Cumacea, a natural history of the Crustacea, and a biography of the Scottish naturalist and founder of the University Marine Biological Station, Millport, David Robertson.