Philip Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse FRS (6 April 1810 - 23 August 1888), who was known as Henry by his friends, was an English scientist and promoter of natural science. He was one of the first people to make seawater aquariums better and a tireless pioneer in the study of marine biology. The first public aquarium was set up and stocked by Gosse at the London Zoo in 1853. He also came up with the word "aquarium" and released the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854....See more

Philip Henry Gosse FRS (6 April 1810 - 23 August 1888), who was known as Henry by his friends, was an English scientist and promoter of natural science. He was one of the first people to make seawater aquariums better and a tireless pioneer in the study of marine biology. The first public aquarium was set up and stocked by Gosse at the London Zoo in 1853. He also came up with the word "aquarium" and released the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854. People in early Victorian England became crazy about aquariums because of his work. Gosse also wrote Omphalos, a book that tried to make sense of the geological ages that Charles Lyell believed in and the Bible story of how the world was made. Gosse was written about as an overbearing father with firm religious beliefs in Father and Son (1907), a memoir by his poet and critic son Edmund Gosse. However, it has since been said that "Gosse's testimony concerning his father falls short." Philip Henry Gosse was born in Worcester in 1810. He was the second of Thomas Gosse's four children. Thomas Gosse was a mezzotint printer and traveling miniature portrait painter, and Hannah Gosse was a lady's maid before she got married. See less