Huxley
/ˈhʌksli/
/ˈhʌksli/
- the name of an English family of scientists and writers. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) was a biologist who publicly supported Charles 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 The 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.