Philip Henry Gosse

1810 - 1888 English

Philip Henry Gosse

Invented seawater aquarium, popularized marine biology

Philip Henry Gosse FRS, known to his friends as Henry, was an English naturalist and populariser of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Gosse created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium" when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854. His work was the catalyst for an aquarium craze in early Victorian England. Gosse was also the author of Omphalos, an attempt to reconcile the geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell with the biblical account of creation. After his death, Gosse was portrayed as an overbearing father of uncompromising religious views in Father and Son (1907), a memoir written by his son, Edmund Gosse, a poet and critic.

Artworks by this artist (15 total)