George Busk was a British naval surgeon, zoologist, and paleontologist.
George Busk
George Busk
Portrait by his daughter, Linnaen Society.
1850 - 1886
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
In 1850 Busk was made a fellow of the Royal Society.
Linnean Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Busk was an active member of the Linnean Society.
1871
Busk received the Royal Medal for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge".
1878
Busk received the Lyell Medal issued by the Geological Society.
1885
Busk received the Wollaston Medal, which is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.
1871
Busk received the Royal Medal for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge".
1878
Busk received the Lyell Medal issued by the Geological Society.
1885
Busk received the Wollaston Medal, which is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
In 1850 Busk was made a fellow of the Royal Society.
Linnean Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Busk was an active member of the Linnean Society.
George Busk
George Busk
Portrait by his daughter, Linnaen Society.
Neanderthal Cranium, outlined by Busk, from Huxley’s Man’s Place.
https://www.amazon.com/Catalogue-Marine-Polyzoa-Collection-British/dp/1173612203/?tag=2022091-20
1852
https://www.amazon.com/Monograph-Fossil-Polyzoa-Crag/dp/0526321849/?tag=2022091-20
1859
(Volume 28)
Volume 28
https://www.amazon.com/Quarterly-Journal-Geological-Society-London/dp/1011087545/?tag=2022091-20
1872
https://www.amazon.com/Transactions-Zoological-Society-London/dp/1341854469/?tag=2022091-20
1877
(Volume 31)
Volume 31
https://www.amazon.com/Quarterly-Journal-Geological-Society-London/dp/1343531748/?tag=2022091-20
anthropologist paleontologist scientist Surgeon Zoologist
George Busk was born on August 12, 1807, in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire. He was the second son of Robert Busk, an English merchant in St. Petersburg, and Jane Westley, daughter of John Westley, customshouse clerk at St. Petersburg. His grandfather, Sir Wadsworth Busk, was attorney general of the Isle of Man, and an uncle was Hans Busk, scholar, and minor poet.
Busk received his medical education at St. Thomas’ and St. Bartholomew’s hospitals.
After receiving his medical education at St. Thomas’ and St. Bartholomew’s hospitals, Busk became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1832. He then became surgeon to the Seaman’s Hospital Society, recently founded for the relief of merchant seamen, and served at Greenwich on the hospital ship Dreadnought, which had been given to the society by the Admiralty.
Although not actually at sea, he made good use of his time and the available clinical material. A few of his notes on scurvy are still extant at the Royal College of Surgeons, but no direct evidence of work on cholera has been found. It is probable that there has been confusion with Busk’s work on fasciolopsiasis, which culminated in his description of the fluke now eponymically styled Fasciolopsis huski, the adult stage of which occurs in the small intestine among natives of India and eastern China. The disease causes toxic symptoms and acute diarrhea and thus may have been termed cholera.
When Busk resigned from the Dreadnought in 1854, he apparently retired from active surgical practice and turned to biology and teaching. In 1843 he had been among the first elected to fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. From 1856 to 1859 he was Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy at the college, and his lecture notes survive in its archives. They make somewhat dull reading now, but his philosophical approach is shown by remarks on reproduction and sexual physiology in invertebrates.
Also, Busk worked as an editor for the Microscopic Journal (1842), the Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science (1853-1868), the Natural History Review (1861-1865), and the Journal of the Ethnological Society (1869-1870). Busk was also a member of the Senate of London University, treasurer of the Royal Institution, and the first Home Office inspector under the Cruelty to Animals Act, a difficult position that he fulfilled with tact and humanity. From 1841, he contributed some seventy papers to scientific journals.
Busk's major achievement was in being the first who formulated the first scientific arrangement of the Bryozoa in 1856, the notes and drawings for which are extant. In the same year, the name Buskia was given to a genus of Bryozoa. His collection is at the Natural History Museum, which also has anthropological material collected by him, notably the Gibraltar cranium, a Neanderthal type he found (but did not recognize as such) in 1868. He was an authority on craniometry, and his opinions were much sought on fossil identification.
Another Busk's chief achievement was in the establishment of the Greenwich Natural History Society in 1852, serving as its president until 1858.
Busk received Royal Medal in 1871, he was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1871 and belonged to the Linnean Society (vice-president and zoological secretary), the Geological Society (Lyell Medal, 1878; Wollaston Medal, 1885), the Microscopical Society (foundation member, 1839; president, 1848-1849), the Anthropological Society (president, 1873-1874), and the Zoological Society.
(Volume 28)
1872(Volume 31)
Busk was a classifier and investigator whose work, although it may now appear insignificant, was ancillary to and provided corroborative evidence for, the ideas of Darwin, Lyell, and Richard Owen. He was therefore closely connected with the development of zoology and anthropology.
Quotations: “Time was when the difficulty of the physiologist lay in understanding reproduction without the sexual process. At the present day, it seems to me the process is reversed and that the question before us is why is sexual union necessary?”
In 1850 Busk was made a fellow of the Royal Society. He was also a member of the Seaman’s Hospital Society, the Linnean Society, the Geological Society, the Microscopical Society (foundation member, 1839; president, 1848-1849), the Anthropological Society (president, 1873-1874), and the Zoological Society. Busk was also a member and the founder of the Greenwich Natural History Society in 1852, where he served as its president until 1858.
A dull writer and lecturer, Busk was described as an excellent surgical operator and a man of “unaffected simplicity and gentleness of character.”
Busk married his cousin Ellen, daughter of Jacob Hans Busk, on 12 August 1843. His portrait in oils was painted by his daughter in 1884 for the Linnean Society; a copy is in the Royal College of Surgeons.
