In 2021, a report prepared by a committee called the History Group at Imperial College
London, UK, recommended that the name of the 19th-century naturalist Thomas Henry
Huxley be removed from the college building that now houses the mathematics and computing
department. Huxley s racist ideas, said the group, made it no longer appropriate,
in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement, to celebrate him in this way. According
to the report, he “espouse[d] a racial hierarchy of intelligence, a belief system
of ‘scientific racism’ that fed the dangerous and false ideology of eugenics; legacies
of which are still felt today”.
The Victorian biologist and anthropologist TH Huxley and his Unesco director grandson, Julian, are compelling twin poles in this wonderfully ambitious saga of a scientific dynasty