Darwin's Bulldog

Adrian Desmond, Huxley: The Devil’s Disciple. London, Michael Joseph, 1994. Pp. xvii + 475, 38 illustrations, £20. ISBN 0 7181 3641 1 Adrian Desmond has followed up his recent biography of Charles Darwin (written with James Moore) with a lively account of the first part of the life of Darwin’s disciple, and most vigorous defender, Thomas Henry Huxley. The two books tend to have the same merits and the same faults. On the positive side, they contain truly fascinating pictures of the sociology of scientific life during the middle of the nineteenth century, and of the development of the impact on society of these two great but very different figures. They lay perhaps too heavy an emphasis on the contrast between Darwin’s favoured upbringing as son of a highly successful physician, with financial support from his father so that he never had to earn his living, and Huxley’s less well-to-do family background, which burdened him with a fierce and prolonged struggle before he could acquire the plurality of academic scientific appointments necessary at that time for an income large enough to support a family. For the two men ended up after all in rather similar scientific positions.