The life of Victorian scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, told in five great pieces of trivia
1. He was known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ for good reason. The most famous moment of Huxley’s career was a debate about evolution that took place at the University of Oxford in 1860. Although others took part in the debate, it has gone down in history as essentially a clash between the pro-evolution Huxley and the anti-evolution Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (who was known as ‘Soapy Sam’ after a comment made by Benjamin Disraeli that the Bishop’s manner was ‘unctuous’). Interestingly, Huxley almost never took part in the debate: he had planned to leave Oxford the day before it took place. Then, a chance meeting with Robert Chambers – who had written an early book on evolution, fifteen years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published – convinced him to stay in Oxford for the debate. Thanks to this tough-minded championing of Darwin’s work Huxley was given the name ‘Darwin’s bulldog’.