Julian Huxley

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley ( born June 22, 1887 in London, † February 14, 1975 ) was an English biologist, philosopher and writer. His early behavioral observations of loons and herons were among the first precise studies of behavioral research, the work of Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen paved the way among others.

Life

Julian Huxley was the eldest son of Leonard Huxley and his first wife Julia Frances. He was educated at Eton and studied zoology at Oxford. From 1910 to 1912 he worked as a lecturer in zoology at Balliol College, from 1912 to 1916 he taught at the Rice Institute in Houston (Texas ). In 1919, he initially returned to Oxford, but was professor ( 1925-1927 ) and Honorary Professor ( 1927-1935 ) at King's College London. After that, he worked as Vice President (1937-1944) and president of the Eugenics Society (1959-1962) and as Secretary General of the Zoological Society of London ( 1935-42 ).

In 1934 he directed the short film The Private Life of the Gannets, a documentary about gannets, who live on a small rocky island off the coast of Wales. The film was awarded the 1937 Academy Award for Best Short Film ( a film role ).

Julian Huxley played a significant role in the establishment phase of UNESCO and was from 1946 to 1948, the first General of the Organization. Furthermore, the establishment of the International Humanist and Ethical Union ( IHEU ) goes back to an initiative Huxley. Huxley was the first president of IHEU, which is a coalition of over 100 humanist and secular organizations today. Julian Huxley in 1953 awarded the Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science.

He was also an important representative of eugenics. He was, among others, from 1937 to 1944 and from 1959 to 1962 in a leading position on the Board of the British Eugenics Society, now the Galton Institute.

1960 Huxley worked as a consultant for UNESCO protection issues of the wild in East Africa; He published several newspaper articles in the British weekly The Observer, in which he drew attention to the nature and habitat destruction of wild animals in Africa. Due to the public's attention, who received his lyrics, the idea and the necessary outreach to the founding of the WWF in the spring of 1961 originated.

Work

As a brother of the writer Aldous Huxley and grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, who had played a major role in the enforcement of the doctrine of Darwin, Huxley coined the idea of ​​evolutionary humanism and " atheism in the name of reason ": " God is an imaginary man- hypothesis in an attempt to deal with the problem of existence. " based in Germany Giordano Bruno Foundation explicitly refers to Huxley's ideas and their promotion, development and dissemination sees prescribed.

Awards

In 1938 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1956, the Darwin Medal awarded him. In 1958 he was knighted.

Works

  • The individual in the animal kingdom (1911 )
  • The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe (1914 )
  • Essays of a Biologist (1923 )
  • The stream of life (1926 )
  • Animal biology ( Burdon Sanderson Haldane John, 1927)
  • Religion without revelation (1927, revised edition 1957)
  • The tissue -culture king (1927 )
  • Ants (1929 )
  • Bird -watching and bird behavior (1930 )
  • What dare I think? (1931 )
  • The captive shrew and other poems (1932 )
  • The science of life ( with HG Wells and his son George Philip Wells, 1931)
  • Problems of relative growth (1932 )
  • A scientist among the Soviets (1932 )
  • Scientific research and social needs (1934 )
  • Elements of experimental embryology ( with Gavin de Beer, 1934)
  • An introduction to science ( with EN Andrade, 1934)
  • Thomas Huxley's diary of the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (1935 )
  • We Europeans. A survey of racial problems ( with Alfred C. Haddon, 1935)
  • Animal language (1938 )
  • The living thoughts of Darwin ( 1939)
  • The new systematics (1940 )
  • The uniqueness of man (1941 )
  • Evolution: the modern synthesis (1942, revised edition 1963)
  • Democracy marches ( 1941) ( German: Democracy marches (1942 ) )
  • Evolutionary ethics (1943 )
  • TVA: Adventure in planning (1944 )
  • On living in a revolution (1944 )
  • Touchstone for ethics (1947 )
  • Man in the modern world (1947 ), essays selected from The uniqueness of man (1941 ) and On living in a revolution ( 1944) ( German: Man in the Modern World (1950 ) )
  • Evolution in action ( 1953) ( German: development of life (1954 ) )
  • From an Antique Country: Ancient and Modern in the Middle East ( 1954) ( German: The desert and the old gods (1956 ) )
  • Kingdom of the beasts (with W. Suschitzky, 1956) ( German: The Animal Kingdom (1956 ) )
  • The story of evolution (1958 )
  • Biological aspects of cancer ( 1957) ( German: Cancer in a biological perspective (1960 ) )
  • The humanist frame (as editor, 1961) ( German: The evolutionary humanism: essays on d 10 guiding principles and problems (1964 ) )
  • Essays of a Humanist (1964 ) (reprinted in 1992 with the title: Evolutionary Humanism, ISBN 0-87975-778-7 ) ( German: I see the future people: Nature & New Humanism (1965 ) )
  • The wonderful world of evolution ( 1969) ( German: Wonderful World of Evolution: The evolution of life from unicellular organisms to man (1970 ) )
  • Memories ( 1970)
  • Memories II ( 1973) ( German: A Life for the future: Memories ( 1974/1981 ) )
  • The Atlas of World Wildlife ( 1973) ( German: . Big Atlas of animal life Corvus Verlag, Berlin (1974 ) )
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