Julian Huxley

Julian Huxley wiki

"Sir Julian Huxley was born June 22, 1887 in London. He died Feb. 14, 1975 in London. Julian, a grandson of the prominent biologist T.H. Huxley and the oldest son of the biographer and man of letters Leonard Huxley, was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and saw service during World War I. His scientific researches included important work on hormones, developmental processes, ornithology, and ecology. He worked for some years at the Rice Institute in Houston, Texas; became professor of zoology at King's College, London University; served for seven years as secretary to the Zoological Society of London, transforming the zoo at Regent's Park and being actively involved in the development of that at Whipsnade in Bedfordshire; and became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1919 he married Marie Juliette Baillot, daughter of a Swiss lawyer, by whom he had two sons: Anthony Julian Huxley, who conducted valuable operational research on aircraft, became an authority on exotic garden plants, and produced the standard encyclopaedia on mountains, and Francis Huxley, who became a lecturer in social anthropology at Oxford. Julian Huxley was the first director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1946–48. He was knighted in 1958. A biography The Huxleys by Ronald W. Clark was published in 1968."

"One of the most important figures in WWF's early history was the renowned British biologist, Sir Julian Huxley. As the first Director General of UNESCO, Huxley had also helped found a scientific research-based conservation institution, now known as IUCN-The World Conservation Union.

"In 1960, Huxley went to East Africa to advise UNESCO on wildlife conservation in the area. He was appalled at what he saw. On his return to London, he wrote 3 articles for The Observer newspaper in which he warned the British public that habitat was being destroyed and animals hunted at such a rate that much of the region's wildlife could disappear within the next 20 years. The articles hit home. They alerted readers to the fact that nature conservation was a serious issue. Huxley received a number of letters from concerned members of the public. Among these was a letter from businessman Victor Stolan, who pointed out the urgent need for an international organization to raise funds for conservation. But Stolan stressed that he was not in a position to launch such an organization himself. Huxley therefore contacted ornithologist Max Nicholson, Director General of Britain's Nature Conservancy, who took up the challenge with enthusiasm. By spring 1961, Nicholson had gathered together a group of scientists and advertising and public relations experts, all committed to establishing an organization of the kind Stolan had suggested. Prominent among those experts was another ornithologist Peter Scott, a vice-president of IUCN, who was later to become the new organization's first chairman. The group decided to base its operations in neutral Switzerland, where IUCN had already transferred its headquarters to a villa in the small town of Morges on the northern shores of Lake Geneva. On the 29th April 1961 they produced the Morges Manifesto (PDF 750kb). The founding document which signaled the very beginning of WWF as we know it today."

Affiliations

 * Recipient of the 1970 Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal
 * Former president, British Eugenics Society

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Political and Economic Planning
 * Economic Reform Club and Institute - member
 * Joy Adamson, Living Free. The story of Elsa and her cubs. Introduction by Sir Julian Huxley.
 * Teilhard De Chardin Pierre
 * H. J. Muller - best known Marxist critic of mainline eugenics - In 1932 he presented The Dominance of Economics over Eugenics at the Third International Eugenics Conference