Early life

Student life

Early career

Mid career

Later career

Evolution

Personal influence

• In the early 20th century he was one of the minority of biologists who believed that natural selection was the main driving force of evolution, and that evolution occurred by small steps and not by saltation (jumps). These opinions are now standard.Though his time as an academic was quite brief, he taught and encouraged a number of evolutionary biologists at the University of Oxford in the 1920s. Charles Elton (ecology), Alister Hardy (marine biology) and John Baker (cytology) all became highly successful, and Baker eventually wrote Huxley's Royal Society obituary memoir. Perhaps the most significant was Edmund Brisco Ford, who founded a field of research called ecological genetics, which played a role in the evolutionary synthesis. Another important disciple was Gavin de Beer, who wrote on evolution and development, and became Director of the Natural History Museum. Both these fine scholars had attended Huxley's lectures on genetics, experimental zoology (including embryology) and ethology. Later, they became his collaborators, and then leaders in their own right.
• In an era when scientists did not travel so frequently as today, Huxley was an exception, for he travelled widely in Europe, Africa and the USA. He was therefore able to learn from and influence other scientists, naturalists and administrators. In the USA he was able to meet other evolutionists at a critical time in the reassessment of natural selection. In Africa he was able to influence colonial administrators about education and wild-life conservation. In Europe, through UNESCO, he was at the centre of the post-World War II revival of education. In Russia, however, his experiences were mixed. His initially favourable view was changed by his growing awareness of Stalin's murderous repression, and the Lysenko affair. There seems little evidence that he had any effect on the Soviet Union, and the same could be said for some other Western scientists."Marxist-Leninism had become a dogmatic religion... and like all dogmatic religions, it had turned from reform to persecution."

Evolutionary synthesis

• Huxley was one of the main architects of the new evolutionary synthesis which took place around the time of World War II. The synthesis of genetic and population ideas produced a consensus which reigned in biology from about 1940, and which is still broadly tenable.

"The most informative episode in the history of evolutionary biology was the establishment of the 'neo-Darwinian synthesis'." Berry and Bradshaw, 1992. The synthesis was brought about "not by one side being proved right and the others wrong, but by the exchange of the most viable components of the previously competing research strategies". Ernst Mayr, 1980.

• Huxley's first 'trial run' was the treatment of evolution in the Science of Life (1929—30), and in 1936 he published a long and significant paper for the British Association. In 1938 came three lengthy reviews on major evolutionary topics. Two of these papers were on the subject of sexual selection, an idea of Darwin's whose standing has been revived in recent times. Huxley thought that sexual selection was "...merely an aspect of natural selection which... is concerned with characters which subserve mating, and are usually sex-limited". This rather grudging acceptance of sexual selection was influenced by his studies on the courtship of the Great Crested Grebe (and other birds that pair for life): the courtship takes place mostly after mate selection, not before.
• Now it was time for Huxley to tackle the subject of evolution at full length, in what became the defining work of his life. His role was that of a synthesiser, and it helped that he had met many of the other participants. His book the modern synthesis was written whilst he was Secretary to the Zoological Society, and made use of his remarkable collection of reprints covering the first part of the century. It was published in 1942. Reviews of the book in learned journals were little short of ecstatic; the American Naturalist called it "The outstanding evolutionary treatise of the decade, perhaps of the century. The approach is thoroughly scientific; the command of basic information amazing".
• Huxley's main co-respondents in the modern evolutionary synthesis are usually listed as Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky, George Gaylord Simpson, Bernhard Rensch, Ledyard Stebbins and the population geneticists J.B.S. Haldane, Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. However, at the time of Huxley's book several of these had yet to make their distinctive contribution. Certainly, for Huxley, E.B. Ford and his co-workers in ecological genetics were at least as important; and Cyril Darlington, the chromosome expert, was a notable source of facts and ideas.An analysis of the 'authorities cited' index of Evolution the modern synthesis shows indirectly those whom Huxley regarded as the most important contributors to the synthesis up to 1941 (the book was published in 1942, and references go up to 1941). The authorities cited 20 or more times are:Darlington, Darwin, Dobzhansky, Fisher, Ford, Goldschmidt, Haldane, J.S. Huxley, Muller, Rensch, Turrill, Wright.This list contains a few surprises. Goldschmidt was an influential geneticist who advocated evolution by saltation, and was sometimes mentioned in disagreement. Turrill provided Huxley with botanical information. The list omits three key members of the synthesis who are listed above: Mayr, Stebbins the botanist and Simpson the palaeontologist. Mayr gets 16 citations and more in the two later editions; all three published outstanding and relevant books some years later, and their contribution to the synthesis is unquestionable. Their lesser weight in Huxley's citations was caused by the early publication date of his book. Huxley's book is not strong in palaeontology, which illustrates perfectly why Simpson's later works were such an important contribution.
• It was Huxley who coined the terms the new synthesis and evolutionary synthesis; he also invented the term cline in 1938 to describe species whose members fall into a series of sub-species with continuous change in characters over a geographical area. The classic example of a cline is the circle of subspecies of the gull Larus round the Arctic zone. This cline is an example of a ring species.Some of Huxley's last contributions to the evolutionary synthesis were on the subject of ecological genetics. He noted how surprisingly widespread polymorphism is in nature, with visible morphism much more prevalent in some groups than others. The immense diversity of colour and pattern in small bivalve molluscs, brittlestars, sea-anemones, tubicular polychaetes and various grasshoppers is perhaps maintained by making recognition by predators more difficult.

Evolutionary progress

• He always believed that on a broad view evolution led to advances in organisation. Progress without a goal was one of his phrases, to distinguish his point of view from classical Aristotelian teleology. "The ordinary man, or at least the ordinary poet, philosopher and theologian, always was anxious to find purpose in the evolutionary process. I believe this reasoning to be totally false."The idea of evolutionary progress was subjected to some fierce criticism in the latter part of the twentieth century. Cladists, for example, were (and are) strongly against any suggestion that a group could be scientifically described as 'advanced' and others as 'primitive'. For them, and especially for the radical group of transformed cladists, there is no such thing as an advanced group, they are derived or apomorphic. Primitive groups are plesiomorphic. Ironically, it was Huxley who invented the terms clade and grades. However, to take a rather extreme case, it would seem strange to say that when man is compared to bacteria, that mankind is not a vastly more complex and advanced form of life; or that the invasion of the land by plants and animals was not a great advance in the history of life on this planet. On this issue Julian was at the opposite end of the spectrum from his grandfather, who was, at least for the first half of his career, a propagandist for 'persistent types', getting close to denying any advances at all.

• Huxley argued his case many times, even in his most important works. In the final chapter of his Evolution the modern synthesis he defines evolutionary progress as "a raising of the upper level of biological efficiency, this being defined as increased control over and independence of the environment," Evolution in action discusses evolutionary progress at length: "Natural selection plus time produces biological improvement... 'Improvement' is not yet a recognised technical term in biology... however, living things are improved during evolution... Darwin was not afraid to use the word for the results of natural selection in general... I believe that improvement can become one of the key concepts in evolutionary biology.""Can it be scientifically defined? Improvements in biological machinery... the limbs and teeth of grazing horses... the increase in brain-power... The eyes of a dragon-fly, which can see all round [it] in every direction, are an improvement over the mere microscopic eye-spots of early forms of life." "[Over] the whole range of evolutionary time we see general advance ... improvement in all the main properties of life, including its general organization. 'Advance' is thus a useful term for long-term improvement in some general property of life. [But] improvement is not universal. Lower forms manage to survive alongside higher". These excerpts are much abbreviated, but give some idea of his way of thinking. He addresses the topic of 'persistent types' (living fossils) later in the same book (pp 126—8).

• The question of evolutionary advancement has quite a history. Of course, pre-Darwin, it was believed without question that Man stood at the head of a pyramid (scala naturae). The matter is not so simple with evolution by natural selection; Darwin's own opinion varied from time to time. In the Origin he wrote "And as natural selection works by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection". This was much too strong; as Sober remarks, there is nothing in the theory of natural selection which demands that selection must produce an increase in complexity or any other measure of advancement. It is merely compatible with the theory that this might happen. Elsewhere Darwin admits that "naturalists have not yet defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by high and low forms" (p336); nor have they now — this is one of the problems. Other evolutionary biologists have had similar thoughts to Huxley: G. Ledyard Stebbins and Bernhard Rensch, for example. The term used to describe progressive evolution is anagenesis, though this term does not necessarily include the idea of improvement.The objective description of complexity was one of the issues addressed by cybernetics in the 1950s. The idea that advanced machines (including living beings) could exert more control over their environments and operate in a wider range of situations perhaps serves as a basis for making the terms such as 'advanced' amenable to more exact definition. This is a debate that continues today.

Secular humanism

Religious naturalism

"Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct something to take its place."

Eugenics and race

"The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore... they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation."

"A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens"... "Now what has the scientist to say about the groups of mankind which may be recognized at the present time? Human races can be and have been differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows: The Mongoloid Division; The Negroid Division; The Caucasoid Division."... "Catholics, Protestants, Moslems and Jews are not races..."

Public life and popularisation

Terms coined

• Clade 1957: a monophyletic taxon; a single species and its descendents.
• Cline 1938: a gradient of gene frequencies in a population, along a given transect.
• Grade 1959: a level of evolutionary advance.
• Ethnic group 1936: as opposed to race
• Morph 1942: as more correct and simpler than polymorph.
• Ritualization 1914: formalised activities in bird behaviour, caused by inherited behaviour chains.
• Transhumanism 1957: the improvement of human beings.

Titles and phrases

• Religion without revelation (1927, 1957)
• The new systematics (1940)
• The uniqueness of man (1941)
• Evolution: the modern synthesis (1942)
• Evolutionary ethics (1943)
• Evolution as a process (1954)
• Essays of a humanist (1964)
• The future of man (1966)

• The individual in the animal kingdom (1911)
• The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe (1914) [a landmark in ethology]
• Essays of a Biologist (1923)
• Essays in Popular Science (1926)
• The stream of life (1926)
• Animal biology (with J.B.S. Haldane, 1927)
• Religion without revelation (1927, revised edition 1957)
• The tissue-culture king (1927) [science fiction]
• Ants (1929)
• The science of life: a summary of contemporary knowledge about life and its possibilities (with H.G. & G.P. Wells, 1929—30). First issued in 31 fortnightly parts published by Amalgamated Press, 1929—31, bound up in three volumes as publication proceeded. First issued in one volume by Cassell in 1931, reprinted 1934, 1937, popular edition, fully revised, 1938. Published as separate volumes by Cassell 1934—37: I The living body. II Patterns of life (1934). III Evolution...fact and theory. IV Reproduction, heredity and the development of sex. V The history and adventure of life. VI The drama of life. VII How animals behave (1937). VIII Man's mind and behaviour. IX Biology and the human race. Published in New York by Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1931, 1934, 1939; and by The Literary Guild 1934. Three of the Cassell spin-off books were also published by Doubleday in 1932: Evolution, fact and theory; The human mind and the behavior of Man; Reproduction, genetics and the development of sex.
• Bird-watching and bird behaviour (1930)
• An introduction to science (with Edward Andrade, 1931—34)
• What dare I think?: the challenge of modern science to human action and belief. Chatto & Windus, London; Harper, N.Y. (1931)
• Africa view (1931)
• The captive shrew and other poems (1932)
• Problems of relative growth (1932)
• A scientist among the Soviets (1932)
• If I were Dictator. Methuen, London; Harper, N.Y. (1934)
• Scientific research and social needs (1934)
• Elements of experimental embryology (with Gavin de Beer, 1934)
• Thomas Huxley's diary of the voyage of HMS Rattlesnake (1935)
• We Europeans (with A.C. Haddon, 1936)
• Animal language (photographs by Ylla, includes recordings of animal calls: 1938, reprinted 1964)
• The present standing of the theory of sexual selection. In Gavin de Beer (ed) Evolution: Essays on aspects of evolutionary biology (pp 11—42). Oxford: Clarendon Press (1938)
• The living thoughts of Darwin (1939)
• The new systematics. Oxford. (1940) [this multi-author volume, edited by Huxley, is one of the foundation stones of the 'New Synthesis', with essays on taxonomy, evolution, natural selection, Mendelian genetics and population genetics]
• Democracy marches. Chatto & Windus, London; Harper N.Y. (1941)
• The uniqueness of man. Chatto & Windus, London. (1941; reprint 1943). U.S. as Man stands alone. Harper, N.Y. 1941.
• On living in a revolution. Harper, N,Y. (1944)
• the modern synthesis. Allen & Unwin, London. (1942, reprinted 1943, 1944, 1945, 1948, 1955; 2nd ed, with new introduction and bibliography by the author, 1963; 3rd ed, with new introduction and bibliography by nine contributors, 1974). U.S. first edition by Harper, 1943. [this summarises research on all topics relevant to evolution up to the Second World War]. New edition by MIT Press in 2010 with Foreword by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller.
• Evolutionary ethics (1943)
• TVA: Adventure in planning (1944)
• Evolution and ethics 1893—1943. Pilot, London. In USA as Touchstone for ethics Harper, N.Y. (1947) [includes text from both T.H. Huxley and Julian Huxley]
• Man in the modern world (1947) eBook, essays selected from The uniqueness of man (1941) and On living in a revolution (1944)
• Soviet genetics and World science: Lysenko and the meaning of heredity. Chatto & Windus, London. In USA as Heredity, East and West. Schuman, N.Y. (1949).
• Evolution in action (1953)
• Evolution as a process (with Hardy A.C. and Ford E.B. eds.) Allen & Unwin, London. (1954)
• From an antique land: ancient and modern in the Middle East. Parrish, London (1954, revised 1966)
• Kingdom of the beasts (with W. Suschitzky, 1956)
• Biological aspects of cancer (1957)
• New bottles for new wine Chatto & Windus, London; Harper N.Y. (1957); repr as Knowledge, morality, destiny. N.Y. (1960)
• The humanist frame (as editor, 1961)
• The coming new religion of humanism (1962)
• Essays of a humanist (1964) reprinted 1966, 1969, 1992: ISBN 0-87975-778-7
• The human crisis (1964)
• Darwin and his world (with Bernard Kettlewell, 1965)
• Aldous Huxley 1894—1963: a memorial volume. (as editor, 1965)
• The future of man: evolutionary aspects. (1966)
• The wonderful world of evolution (1969)
• Memories (2 vols 1970 & 1973) [his autobiography]
• The Mitchell Beazley Atlas of World Wildlife. Mitchell Beazley, London; also published as The Atlas of World Wildlife. Purnell, Cape Town. (1973)

Contributions

• Eliot Howard, Territory in bird life. Collins (1948 edition) — Foreword, with James Fisher

• Baker John R. 1978. Julian Huxley, scientist and world citizen, 1887—1975. UNESCO, Paris.
• Clark, Ronald W. 1960. Sir Julian Huxley. Phoenix, London.
• Clark, Ronald W. 1968. The Huxleys. Heinemann, London.
• Dronamraju, Krishna R. 1993. If I am to be remembered: the life & work of Julian Huxley, with selected correspondence. World Scientific, Singapore.
• Green, Jens-Peter 1981. Krise und Hoffnung, der Evolutionshumanismus Julian Huxleys. Carl Winter Universitatsverlag.
• Huxley, Julian. 1970, 1973. Memories and Memories II. George Allen & Unwin, London.
• Huxley, Juliette 1986. Leaves of the tulip tree. Murray, London [her autobiography includes much about Julian]
• Keynes, Milo and Harrison, G. Ainsworth (eds) 1989. Evolutionary studies: a centenary celebration of the life of Julian Huxley. Proceeding of the 24th annual symposium of the Eugenics Society, London 1987. Macmillan, London.
• Olby, Robert 2004. Huxley, Sir Julian Sorell (1887—1975). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (2680 words)
• Waters, C. Kenneth and Van Helden, Albert (eds) 1993. Julian Huxley: biologist and statesman of science. Rice University Press, Houston. [scholarly articles by historians of science on Huxley's work and ideas]