Julian Sorell Huxley
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A GUIDE TO THE PAPERS OF • JULIAN SORELL HUXLEY by Sarah C. Bates Mary G. Winkler with the assistance of Christina Riquelmy Woodson Research Center Rice University Fondren Library Houston, Texas LC 84-80123 Woodson Research Center Rice University Library Houston, Texas • February, 1984 Revised June, 1987 This guide has been printed on acid-free paper I ' i ! • Crested grebes: drawing by Miss Woodward based on Huxley 1 s sketches from 11 The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe." HUXLEY, JULIAN SORELL (1887-1975). PAPERS, [1899-] 1900-1975 [-1980]. 91 1 inear feet. Abstract Papers of the British biologist, philosopher and popularizer of sctence. Grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, son of Julia Arnold, and older brother of Aldous Huxley, Sir Julian began his career in 1910 as a teacher and practicing biologist, became director •of the London Zoo, acted as first director-general of Unesco, and until his death in 1975 was a prolific author and widely-travelled speaker. Huxley's scientific achievements included studies of taxonomy and relative growth, pioneering work in ethology, and important writing in the early twentieth-century synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. His belief that evolution was not only biological but social and cultural as well led to interests in eugenics, population control, conservation, and humanist movements. The collection documents Huxley's role as a synthesizer and educator who influenced thinking in many areas. Linking scientists, sctence and other fields, and sctence and the public, Huxley corresponded with such scientists, artists, writers, and social figures as Kenneth Clark, J. B. S. Haldane, H. J. Muller, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Spender, and H. G. Wells. Other materials found in the papers include original writings; publications of others; organizational, conference and travel materials; personal diaries; photographs; and memorabilia. In a separately indexed addition to the collection are Sir Julian's "box files," containing reprints, clippings, letters and notes arranged by subject. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In preparing the guide to the papers of Julian Sorell Huxley, the manuscript processors received advice and aid from several sources. These sources deserve an expression of gratitude. We would like to thank Professors Ira D. Gruber, Martin J. Wiener, and Mark A. Kulstad for their help in preparing the index, Professor Robert L. Patten for kindly acting as liaison between the Huxley family • and the processing staff, and Professor Albert Van Helden for generously offering his expertise throughout the project as our consultant. We also thank Dan Graur who was so generous with time, knowledge and enthusiasm. We are indebted to Lady Huxley for graciously supplying genealo- gical information, and to Professor Joseph Needham for his reminiscences of Sir Julian and of their mutual Unesco experiences. Lady Huxley and Professor Needham provided insight and information which we could not easily have procured from other sources. Finally we want to acknowledge the help of our student assistant Mark Ball, whose intelligence, interest, and diligence made our work so much easier. TABLE OF CONTENTS Biography 3 Biographical Chronology 9 The Collection 17 Scope and Content Notes 19 Inventory 33 Early Materials 33 Family Cocrespondence 33 General Correspondence • 35 Journals, Diaries and Notebooks 38 Manuscripts, Typescripts, Notes 40 Publications by Julian Huxley 49 Tcavel Materials 51 Conference Materials 52 Organizational Materials 53 Manuscripts, Publications and Addresses by Others 58 Clippings 59 Photographs, Visual Materials 60 Memocabilia 62 Box Files 63 Appendices Rice Appendix 67 Genealogical Information 70 Selected Biographical Bibliography 75 Notes on Related Collections 76 Index to Selected Correspondents 78 4 worthy and characteristic that he spent his prize money on a micro- scope.) After completing his schooling, he began his career at the insti- tution which had taught him: in 1910, he became a Lecturer in Zoology at Oxford. Two years later, however, he departed from the course tra- ditional to a young man of his academic interests and social background. He left England and Oxford to accept a position as Research Associate at the newly-established Rice Institute in Houston, Texas, and by 1913 • he had become Assistant Professor of Biology there. He remained in Houston until 1916 when he returned to Europe to take part in World War I. After serving as an Army Intelligence officer in Italy, he came home to marry and to take up a position as Senior Demonstrator in Zoology at Oxford. From 1919 to 1925 he remained at Oxford, carrying out his famous axolotl experiments and participating in the university's expedition to Spitsbergen. In 1925 he became Professor of Zoology at King's College, University of London. But he did not remain long in that position. The following year he made a decision which, like his decision to teach at the Rice Institute, would move him away from the path followed by most of his fellow scientists. He accepted the invita- tion of H. G. Wells to collaborate on what would become The Science of Life, and in 1927 resigned his position at King's College. This meant a new direction for his career, for although he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution from 1927 to 1929, after that he held no academic position. For ten years he was a private person work- ing to advance his ideas about the biological sciences not as a re- searcher nor as a teacher, but as a writer on scientific developments I 5 I and their relationship to contemporary social issues. I In 1935 he accepted the position of Secretary of the Zoological I Society of London. In this capacity he had the means to encourage solid research on animal behavior while introducing innovative methods for im- plementing his vision of the zoo as an educational institution. Unfor- tWlately his leadership aroused the displeasure of some members of the Society, and in 1942 he resigned under pressure. He continued, however, his work as writer and lecturer and was known throughout war-time Bri- tain for his participation as a panel member of the B.• B. C. Brains Trust program. The end of the war brought an opportunity for him to put many of his cherished ideals and projects into practice. True to family tradi- tion, he had always viewed science, art, and literature as part of a great whole. Thus when he became a member of the commission formed to plan what would become Unesco, he ensured that science would be an inte- gral part of that educational and cultural institution. When in 1946 he became Unesco's first Director-General, he set out a program cosmopoli- tan in vision, one concerned with mankind in relationship with nature and with its past, one in which art and science T~Ere equally valued. He even T~En t so far as to advocate his own solution to the troubling; questions of modern society, his "religion" ·of scientific humanism, as an official basis for Unesco's philosophy. This he himself came later to find unwise. During his tenure as Director-General he also began to articulate fully the concerns which would occupy the later years of his life: the relationship of overpopulation to poverty and ignorance, the necessity for the conservation of wilderness and wildlife, and the im- portance of the renunciation of parochial views on religion and politics. 6 Finally, he came to stress even more strongly than before his optimis- tic belief that mankind can and should take control of its own environ- ment and biological destiny. In 1948 his term of office with Unesco came to an end and Huxley was once again a private citizen. The remainder of his life was spent travelling, lecturing, and writing in support of the causes to which he was devoted: evolutionary theory and its significance for potential human development, ecology and the preservation of wildlife, and popula- 4 tion control. He was honored often for his contributions to science and to society, receiving prizes and awards for his efforts in helping the general public to better understand contemporary scientific thought. In 1958 he received a knighthood. In 1965, in a culmination of work he began in his youth with his field studies of the behavior of the great crested grebe, he organized a Royal Society Symposium on the Ritualisa- tion of Behaviour in Animals and Man, and in 1970 he received the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Gold Medal for out- standing contributions to scientific research related to conservation. On February 14, 1975, at the age of 87, Sir Julian Huxley died. His life had been long, beginning in the Victorian era and ending in a world which his grandfather could scarcely have imagined. He served many of the causes with which the 20th century will no doubt become identi fied, and his influence on the development of contemporary biological science was considerable. Through his field studies of animal behavior and his synthetic approach to Darwinian evolutionary theory and Mendelian genetics, he helped determine the direction of modern biology. As an educator his influence was incalculable, for he taught not only such me~ as E. B. Ford and A. C. Hardy, but through his writings, perhaps million~ 7 l l of men and women,as well. He was, moreover, known for his encourage- j ment of aspiring scientists and scholars. In his catholic interests, I in his belief in the interrelationship of science and the arts, he extended his influence beyond the laboratory or the classroom and reached artists, writers, musicians, politicians, and finally the general public. Such interests and such influence indicate that his desire to be known as one to whom "nothing human and nothing in external nature was alien" was fulfilled. • r • Athenian owl: drawing of an Athenian drachma presented by Huxley to Rice Institute, 1919.