John Hulke

John Whitaker Hulke FRCS FRS FGS ( born November 6, 1830 in Deal, † February 19, 1895 in London) was a British surgeon, geologist and fossil collector.

Hulke collected over many years fossils in the Wealden cliffs of the Isle of Wight, and his work in the field of vertebrate paleontology included investigations of Iguanodon and Hypsilophodon the Wealden ( Lower Cretaceous ). He was 1882-1884 President of the Geological Society of London, in 1887 its Wollaston medal awarded him. He was 1883 President of the Pathological Society, and was from 1893 until his death president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Life

Hulke was the son of a physician in Deal. He visited during part of his school years a boarding school in England, he spent the other part of a school of the Moravian Church in Neuwied (1843-1845), where he learned fluent German and developed an interest in geology because of frequent trips to the Eifel. After his return to England he went to the King's College School, and began three years later, his hospital work. The Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, he acquired in 1852.

Hulke worked with Thomas Henry Huxley at the Royal College of Surgeons. He came with the avowed and uncompromising atheists Huxley along well, although Hulke because of its Dutch origin and the Calvinistic Protestant tendencies, according to contemporaries had a rather unyielding attitude of faith.

To the Crimean War he volunteered, and in 1855 auxiliary surgeon in Smyrna, and later at the siege of Sevastopol. After his return he became a medical instructor in his old hospital in 1857 was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1857 and was an assistant surgeon place at the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, and 1868-1890 that of a surgeon.

In 1870, he became a surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital. From now on he devoted all his free time in geology and especially the fossil vertebrates.

Work

1861 Hulke first described the so-called oculodermale melanosis, a bluish hyperpigmentation of the face. For much of his medically important work accomplished Hulkes at Middlesex Hospital. His reputation as a skilled surgeon was widespread: he had in all fields of surgery at home, he acquired special merits but as ophthalmologist.

As a geologist, he acquired a European reputation, mainly due to his comparative work on the area of the eyes of reptiles and humans. He described many dinosaurs fossils of the Isle of Wight and had access to one of the best collections of his time: that of the Reverend W. Fox from the Isle of Wight.

Hulke 1869 was a complete Iguanodon Skull, and bade him Huxley for scientific description. Huxley was too busy, but he helped Hulke going to prepare the Fund and described. Hulke published a series of articles on vertebrate skulls in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society.

1887 Hulke received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society. It was in 1883, both President of the Geological Society and the Pathological Societiy, and from 1893 until his death president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In total, he has published more than 50 scientific papers, including 28 on dinosaurs. After his death, his collection was donated to the Natural History Museum.