A member of a prominent English intellectual family, evolutionary biologist Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975) was the grandson of eminent evolutionist and Darwin-contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley (APS 1869), the elder brother of visionary writer Aldous Huxley, and the half-brother of Nobel prize-winning physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley (APS 1975). From the early stages of his career as teacher and academic, to the later stages as an independent scholar, lecturer, and administrator, Julian Huxley left his mark on evolutionary biology, both as a leading figure in the neo-Darwinian synthesis and as a popular scientist.

Julian Sorell Huxley was born on 22 June 1887 in Russell Square, London in the home of his aunt, the novelist Mary Augusta Ward. He was the eldest child of Leonard Huxley, a schoolmaster and editor of a literary journal, and Julia Arnold Huxley, a schoolteacher and founder of a girls' boarding school. Julian was a precocious child who had the audacity to challenge his elders, once famously correcting grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley on the parental behavior of stickleback fish.

From an early age, Julian was fascinated by nature--in particular in the behavior of living animals and their past evolution. He was also captivated by birds. Bird-watching was a hobby enjoyed by Julian throughout his life. Julian was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. At Eton he excelled in a number of subjects, by his final year (1905) winning prizes in poetry, Shakespeare, and biology. The latter prize he won for four consecutive years. He was also decorated at Balliol, earning the Newdigate Prize for English Verse in 1908 (he used the prize money to purchase a microscope), and a first-class honors degree in natural science (zoology) in 1909. He was fortunate to study under numerous influential dons at Oxford, including E. S. Goodrich in comparative anatomy, J. W. Jenkinson in experimental embryology, and Geoffrey Smith in zoology.

During this time, while attending a celebration for the 50th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of Species at Cambridge, Julian experienced an epiphany. He realized: "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection had emerged as one of the great liberating concepts of science...achieving for life the same sort of illuminating synthesis that Newton had provide for inanimate nature. I resolved that all my scientific studies would be undertaken in a Darwinian spirit and that my major work would be concerned with evolution, in nature and in man" (Huxley, Memories).

After graduating from Oxford, Huxley studied at the Naples Marine Biological Station and lectured at his alma mater, Balliol College. Just two years later, in 1912, he made a radical decision, quitting the established, settled world of Oxford for the adventurous, undeveloped land of Texas. He left a college with a rich history and tradition, dating to 1263, for an institute set to begin offering classes for the first time in 1912. Huxley accepted the Chair of Biology at Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas. He set about building a department and hired a young geneticist from Columbia University, Hermann J. Muller, to serve on the faculty and an energetic technician from Eton, Joseph I. Davies, to serve as his laboratory assistant.

Huxley's stay in Texas was to be short-lived, as by 1916 he felt duty bound to return to England to volunteer his services to his country, to help fight the Great War. His health record prevented a frontline role (Huxley was prone to depression, and suffered through several serious bouts throughout his adult life), and after a time in the Censor's office and the Army Service Corps, Huxley "pulled various wires" and was transferred to Army Intelligence. His unit shipped off to the Italian front, where Huxley spent the remainder of the war spying on the Austrian lines and a period after the armistice serving as an education officer.

Following the war, in 1919, Huxley returned to Oxford, accepting a fellowship in zoology at New College. This marked the beginning of his longest stint in higher education. He remained at Oxford for six years and worked with a number of talented students, including John Baker, C. P. Blacker, Gavin de Beer, Charles Elton, E. B. Ford, Alister Hardy, and Bernard Tucker. During this time, he experimented with axolotl, introducing oxen thyroid cells to the tadpoles of the small amphibians. The resulting adult became adapted to land living. The study was printed in Nature and became known to the popular press. Upon learning of the study, the Daily Mail melodramatically exclaimed that Huxley had "discovered the Elixir of Life." Huxley took the opportunity to clarify his findings to the public, and relished in the notion that he was educating popular audiences with his pen.

In 1925 Huxley took up a new challenge, securing a position as Professor of Zoology at King's College, London. Shortly thereafter in 1926, he agreed to collaborate with H. G. Wells and son G. P. Wells on a work called The Science of Life, an encyclopedic synthesis on biology aimed at the general public. Realizing he could not both teach fulltime and contribute effectively to the project with Wells and Wells, Huxley resigned his position at King's College in 1927. This marked the end of his career as a fulltime academic; for the rest of his life he worked outside of academia.

After completing The Science of Life in 1930 and enjoying its popular success, Huxley turned to part-time lecturing and fulltime writing. Over the next five years, he published no less than nine books and numerous articles, aimed at both scholarly and general audiences, on a vast array of subjects, including birds, bird watching, ants, Africa, relative growth, philosophy, the U.S.S.R., poetry, general science, experimental embryology, and European ethnicity. During this time, Huxley also began to appear on radio, commentating on scientific and social issues. By 1939 he was a fixture on the airwaves, having become a regular on the BBC's "Brains Trust." He dabbled in film as well in the 1930s, contributing to "Cosmos, the Story of Evolution" and the Eugenics Society's "Heredity in Man." In 1934, Huxley worked with naturalist Ronald Lockley and filmmaker John Grierson to produce a documentary entitled "The Private Life of the Gannets," which captured the habits of the seabirds at Grassholm, off the coast of Wales. Wildly successful, the film won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1937, the first wildlife film to ever win an Oscar.

Around the same time Huxley's film on the gannet was being enjoyed by the British public, he accepted a position which would allow him to further promote biology and conservation. In 1935, Huxley was appointed Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), with chief responsibility of directing the London Zoo. He sought to educate visitors, particularly children, in the science of the world around them, with the "zoo as [a] living museum, demonstrating the extraordinary variety of animal types and their remarkable adaptations" (Huxley, Memories). In his seven years at ZSL, Huxley introduced regular lectures for children, the Children's Zoo, the Studio of Animal Art, and Zoo Magazine. For the first time, ZSL produced a number of films on wildlife and hired a public relations officer. Under Huxley's leadership, the zoo enjoyed a dramatic increase in children's attendance and a higher profile with the public at large.

While at the zoo, Huxley continued to write, working on what was to be his magnum opus, Evolution, The Modern Synthesis. In the comprehensive, neo-Darwinian synthesis on evolution, Huxley advocated for an interdisciplinary approach in analyzing variation and natural selection. He sought to cover every topic related to evolution, "from the biochemical basis of heredity to the evolution of consciousness, with its effects on human cultural development, and the problem of defining evolutionary progress" (Huxley, Memories). Huxley published Evolution in 1942, after five years of hard work. The effort was well received; it sold 3,000 copies in its first month, and quickly became a staple in university biology courses.

Just prior to the publishing of Evolution, Huxley's tenure at ZSL came to an abrupt end. Huxley was not without his critics at ZSL. Some felt he spent too much time on personal projects, while others disagreed on the direction he was taking the zoo. These critics decided to relieve Huxley of his position while he was away lecturing in the United States. Huxley returned to Britain to try and save his position, to no avail. He was once again an independent scholar.

Huxley continued to lecture and appear on BBC radio. He also traveled and served on several national and international commissions. As a member of the Commission on Higher Education in the British Colonies, he ventured to West Africa to survey the state of education in that developing part of the world. Just after the fighting stopped in Europe in 1945, he visited the U.S.S.R. as a guest scientist to celebrate the Academy of Sciences' bicentenary. He served on the Hobhouse Committee on National Parks, and chaired the Wild Life Conservation Special Committee, the result of which was the recommendation that the government of the United Kingdom attempt to preserve nature by establishing national parks and nature reserves.

Late in 1944, he began attending meetings of the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education and became involved in discussions concerning the forming of an agency dealing with education and culture under the auspices of the new United Nations. Along with R. A. Butler and Joseph Needham, Huxley was instrumental in persuading delegates to include science in the new agency. The concept of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was born.

When compatriot Alfred Zimmern, the Secretary of the Prepatory Commission for UNESCO charged with forming the charter of the organization, fell ill in the spring of 1945, Huxley stepped in to the breach. He was appointed Secretary, and promptly wrote UNESCO, Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, in which he laid out his vision for the organization. Stressing the importance of an organizational philosophy based on scientific humanism promoting advance and progress, he called on UNESCO to foster mutual aid, the sharing of scientific ideas, and cultural interchange amongst the world's peoples. While his manifesto wasn't explicitly adopted in the charter, his views were influential in establishing an ethos at UNESCO. Upon the formal creation of the organization by the UN, Huxley was appointed chief executive--the first Director General--of UNESCO in 1946.

Huxley served as Director General of UNESCO for a brief term of two years, from 1946-1948. He spent much of his tenure traveling the globe publicizing the new agency and trying to garner support from political and academic leaders. Among the causes he championed were: conservation and the creation of national parks, preservation of cultural objects and the establishment of museums, and utilization of science and technology to improve living conditions around the world. Huxley was instrumental in the founding of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an organization which supports nature conservation. At the suggestion of Joseph Needham, he strongly advocated for a comprehensive History of Mankind, chronicling scientific and cultural developments across the globe. He was also concerned with overpopulation, and while at UNESCO called for the widespread use of birth control in developing nations. (The concern for public health was a recurring theme in Huxley's life. He was active in the eugenics movement, serving as Vice President [1937-1944] and President [1959-1962] of the British Eugenics Society.)

Upon leaving UNESCO in 1948 at age sixty-one, Huxley retired from fulltime employment. He stayed active as an independent scholar, writing, lecturing, and traveling extensively, for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. He continued to publish prolifically, writing ten books and many articles during this time. The last major work he published was a two-volume autobiography entitled Memories. Julian Huxley suffered a stroke in 1973 and his health deteriorated. He died on 14 February 1975 at his home in London.

Huxley achieved many awards during his life, including: Fellow of the Royal Society (1938); UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science (1953); the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society (1956); the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society (1958); knighthood (1958); Lasker Award in Planned Parenthood – World Population (1959); IUCN Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to scientific research related to conservation (1970).

Julian Huxley married Juliette Baillot (1896-1994), a French-Swiss governess, in 1919. The couple had two sons, Anthony Julian Huxley (1920-1992), a horticulturalist and botanist; and Francis Huxley (1923-2016), an anthropologist.

The Huxley Papers provide an interesting insight into the work of Julian Sorell Huxley. Including correspondence, research notes, works, graphics, and sketchbooks, the small, yet significant collection is comprised of just over two linear feet of material from Huxley's professional life.

Much of the material in the collection dates from the 1950s, after Huxley left UNESCO and was working as an independent scholar. In particular, the material primarily deals with his exploration of genetic polymorphism, or as he preferred to call it, "morphism." In 1954 Huxley gave a presentation titled "Morphism in Birds" at the 11th Congress of International Ornithology, of which there is a written manuscript version in Series III. And in 1955, he published an important synthesis of polymorphism titled "Morphism and Evolution" in Heredity. Many of the letters and research notes in the collection appear to have been created in exploring these topics.

While the correspondence represents only a small sample of a particular period of Huxley's professional life, it does offer a glimpse into Huxley's thinking, and to the wide network of scholars and experts with which he was able to consult.

In 1960, Huxley made a trip to Africa to report to UNESCO on the conservation of wildlife in the southern and eastern part of the continent. The English newspaper The Observer commissioned him to write a series of articles during his trip. He produced three essays on animal conservation, in one of which he made the pithy observation: "Politics we shall always have with us, but if wildlife is destroyed, it is gone forever." Included in Series IV are 11 images Huxley photographed while on this African mission.

The most visually stunning materials in the collection are the seven volumes of sketchbooks (Series V). Huxley created the notebooks from 1939-1941, while he was serving as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London. The notebooks contain over 700 anatomical sketches of animals, with parts labeled and notes. The images are organized by scientific classification. The drawings are pencil sketches and some are strikingly colored.

To facilitate ease of access, letters and works have been removed from their original places in the collection. Huxley kept the letters and works filed in with his research notes. Copies of each letter and work appear in the precise place they were found in the research notes. The original letters and works have been removed and placed in to folders, organized by author, in to Series I and III. For preservation purposes, graphics have been removed from their original places in with the research notes and moved to a separate series, Series IV. In all cases, photocopies have been placed in the research notes denoting where removed materials were originally found.

Restrictions

Due to preservation activities, access to the sketchbooks (Series V) is temporarily prohibited.

Provenance

Purchased from Robinson Street Books, Binghamton, New York on 6 November 2013 with funds donated by Friends of the APS.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Julian Sorell Huxley Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Processed by Michael Miller, March 2014

Related material

The bulk of Julian Sorell Huxley's Papers can be found at the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.

APS possesses numerous collections relating to the history of evolutionary biology, some of which contain correspondence of Julian Huxley, including the papers of: Albert Blakeslee (Mss. B. B585), Arthur James Cain (Mss. Ms. Coll. 63), Hampton Carson (Mss. Ms. Coll. 83), Theodosius Dobzhansky (Mss. B. D65), Ernst Mayr (Mss. B. M451), Philip MacDonald Sheppard (Mss. Ms. Coll. 65), and George Gaylord Simpson (Mss. Ms. Coll. 31).

APS also houses the papers of Julian Huxley's grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (Mss. B. H981), and the papers of Charles Darwin (Mss. B. D25).

Bibliography

Genetics Note

This collection contains materials which relate to the history of genetics.

• Sketchbooks.

• Blakeslee, Albert Francis, 1874-1954
• Cain, Arthur J. (Arthur James), 1921-1999
• Carson, Hampton L. (Hampton Lawrence), 1914-2004
• Huxley, Julian, 1887-1975
• Kettlewell, H. B. D. (Henry Be
• Lockley, R. M. (Ronald Mathias), 1903-2000
• Mayr, Ernst, 1904-2005
• Muller, H. J. (Hermann Joseph), 1890-1967
• Sauer, E. G. Franz (Edgar Gustav Franz), 1925-1979
• Sheppard, P. M. (Philip MacDonald), 1921-1976
• Thoday, J. M. (John Marion), 1916-2008
• Waddington, C. H. (Conrad Hal), 1905-1975

• Animals -- Sketches
• Evolution (Biology)
• Evolutionary synthesis.
• Fossils -- Sketches
• Genetics -- Animals
• Genetics -- Birds
• Genetics -- Polymorphism
• Natural selection
• Polymorphism (Zoology)