Edward Tyson

Edward Tyson (* 1650 in Clevedon, Somerset; † August 1, 1708 in London) was a British physician and zoologist.

Life and work

Edward Tyson studied medicine at Oxford and Cambridge and was a member of the Royal Society. In addition to his medical career, he also devoted himself to medical and zoological research. 1680 he published his studies on a harbor porpoise ( Phocoena or The Anatomy of a Porpess ), then the most accurate description of a whale. Other studies have included, among others, peccaries, rattlesnakes, opossums and earthworms. Best known is his 1699 published work " Orang- outang, sive, Homo sylvestris: or, The anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with did of a monkey to ape, and a man, in which he first of the physique of an ape with the. people compared and made ​​a list of similarities and differences. His so-called orang- outang was in truth a chimpanzee, whose skeleton can now be visited even in a London museum. Tyson's work remained authoritative for over a century, and yet Thomas Henry Huxley, the people in the 19th century, cover, consistently in the theory of evolution, paid tribute to his work in Evidence as to Man 's Place in Nature as a model of scientific accuracy.

In addition to his zoological activities, Tyson also dedicated human medical research and was director of a hospital in London. He died in 1708 at the age of 57 years.