author
Sydney J. (Sydney John) Hickson
1859–1940
A British zoologist and coral specialist, he helped bring Darwinian ideas into university biology and spent decades shaping the study of zoology in Manchester. His travels in the Malay Archipelago also fed the vivid natural history writing behind books such as A Naturalist in North Celebes.
2 Audiobooks
The fauna of the deep sea
by Sydney J. (Sydney John) Hickson
The story of life in the seas
by Sydney J. (Sydney John) Hickson
About the author
Born in Highgate, London, on June 25, 1859, Sydney John Hickson became a respected British zoologist whose work ranged across evolution, embryology, genetics, and systematics. He is especially remembered for his studies of corals and other marine life, and for the fieldwork he carried out in the Malay Archipelago in the mid-1880s.
In 1894 he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester, where he remained a major figure in the subject for many years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1895, reflecting the importance of his research and his standing in British science.
Hickson also wrote for a wider audience, turning scientific travel and observation into engaging natural history books. He died in Cambridge on February 6, 1940, after a long career devoted to research, teaching, and the growth of zoology as a university discipline.