Huxley
Huxley [Huxley] BrE NAmE
the name of an English family of scientists and writers. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) was a ↑biologist who publicly supported Darwin's ideas about ↑evolution, and became known as ‘Darwin’s ↑bulldog ’. He also invented the word agnostic to describe a person who is not sure whether or not God exists. His son Leonard Huxley (1860–1933), a writer, had three famous sons. The first, Julian Huxley (1887–1975), was a ↑biologist and writer who was well known for his appearances on the radio and television programme ↑Brains Trust and later became director of UNESCO (1946–8). The second, Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), an author, is best known for his novel ↑Brave New World (1932), which describes a future society in which people are born in factories and controlled by a continuous supply of drugs and sex. From 1937 Aldous Huxley lived in ↑California, where his experiences with drugs became the subject of a later book, The Doors of Perception (1954). The third famous son, Andrew Huxley, is a scientist who received the ↑Nobel Prize in 1963 for his description of how animal muscles work. He was made a ↑knight in 1974.
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