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THOMSON, Sir CHARLES WYVILLE
(1830–1882), naturalist, son of Andrew Thomson, surgeon in the East India
Company's service, was born at Bonsyde, Linlithgow, on 5 March 1830. His
baptismal name was Wyville Thomas Charles, and the change was formally made
when he was gazetted as knight. He was educated first at Merchiston Castle
school, and then at the university of Edinburgh, attending the classes in
medicine. His aptitude for natural science showed first in the direction of
botany, and was so marked that in 1850 he was appointed lecturer on botany
at King's College, Aberdeen, and in the following year professor in the same
subject at Marischal College. But in 1853 his field of work was enlarged by
his appointment to the chair of natural history in Queen's College, Cork,
and by his removal in the following year to that of mineralogy and geology
at Queen's College, Belfast, where, in 1860, he was transferred to the
professorship of natural science. To this post in 1868 was added that of
professor of botany to the Royal College of Science, Dublin. His last
removal was in 1870 to the professorship of natural history in the
university of Edinburgh.
Some years before he had turned his mind to questions relating to the
distribution of life and the physical conditions in the deeper parts of the
ocean, to which attention had already been directed by Dr. G. C. Wallich,
who in 1860 accompanied the Bulldog in a sounding voyage across the North
Atlantic. Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter [q. v.] was also keenly interested
in similar questions, and ultimately the matter was taken up by the Royal
Society, with the result that in the summer of 1868 the two naturalists, on
board the gunboat Lightning, made a series of investigations to the north of
Scotland as far as the Faroe Islands. The work was continued in the
following year, with the aid of John Gwyn Jeffreys [q. v.], on board her
majesty's ship Porcupine, off the west coast of Ireland, in the Bay of
Biscay, and to the north of Scotland, and an expedition was made to the
Mediterranean in 1870, which Thomson, owing to an illness, could not
accompany. He described the general results of these researches in a volume
published in 1873, and entitled ‘The Depths of the Sea.’
These cruises, however, were only preliminary to an investigation on a much
more extended scale. They had proved so fruitful and suggestive that the
government was strongly urged by the leading men of science in Great Britain
to send out a roomy and well-equipped vessel, in order to make a series of
soundings and dredgings in the three great ocean basins, to ascertain the
temperature and character of the water, to collect specimens of the fauna
and flora on the surface and from all possible depths, and to study as far
as possible certain rarely visited oceanic islands—in fact, to make a
somewhat devious voyage of circumnavigation, which was expressly guided by
the desire to increase scientific knowledge. The Challenger, a corvette of
2,306 tons, was specially fitted up and placed under command of Captain (now
Sir George) Nares, with a naval surveying staff. Thomson, who had been
granted leave of absence by his university, was appointed chief of the
civilian scientific staff (six in number), and the vessel left Sheerness on
7 Dec. 1872. They crossed the Atlantic from the Canary Isles to the West
Indies, when after skirting its American side as far north as Halifax they
recrossed to Madeira by the Azores. Then they sailed southward of the Cape
de Verde Islands and St. Paul's Rocks to Fernando Noronha and the Brazil
coast, crossing the southern Atlantic by way of Tristan da Cunha to the Cape
of Good Hope. From this they made for the Antarctic Ocean by way of the
Crozets and Kerguelen land, and reached the ice-pack a little south of the
Antarctic circle, beyond which it was unsafe to venture in an ordinary
vessel. Thence they proceeded to Australia, and after touching at Melbourne
and Sydney, sailed for Fiji. A devious course took them through the
Australasian islands, and they then visited Japan and the Sandwich Islands.
After sailing due south to the tropic of Capricorn, they took an easterly
course to Valparaiso, and made their way into the southern Atlantic through
the Magellan Strait. After calling at Montevideo they visited the Canaries,
and returned to England by a variation of their former route, arriving at
Spithead on 24 May 1876, having travelled in this remarkable voyage 68,890
nautical miles, and having made observations by soundings at 362 stations.
An enormous mass of material had been obtained for study, and Thomson (who
received the honour of knighthood on his return) was appointed director of
the Challenger expedition commission to superintend the arrangement of the
collections and the publication of the results at the public expense. He
also resumed his university duties, delivered the Rede lecture at Cambridge
in 1877, and in the following year presided over the geographical section at
the meeting of the British Association in Dublin. But he had undertaken more
than his constitution could bear. He was struck down by an illness in the
summer of 1879, which prevented him from resuming his lectures, and he died
at his house, Bonsyde, near Linlithgow, on 10 March 1882. He married, in
1853, Jane Ramage, eldest daughter of Adam Dawson, of Bonnytown,
Linlithgowshire, who survived him. Their only son, Frank Wyville Thomson,
became surgeon-captain in the 3rd Bengal cavalry.
Thomson received the following honorary degrees: LL.D. of Aberdeen, 1853,
LL.D. 1860, and D.Sc. 1871, of the Queen's University, Ireland; LL.D.
Dublin, 1878, and Ph.D. Jena. He was elected F.R.S.E. 1855, M.R.I.A. 1861,
F.R.S. 1869, and was a fellow of the Linnean, Geological, Zoological, and
other societies, besides receiving the honorary membership of various
scientific bodies, colonial and foreign. He was awarded a royal medal in
1876, and in 1877 was created a knight of the Polar Star when a delegate
from the university of Edinburgh to that of Upsala, on the occasion of their
quater-centenary.
Thomson's more important papers, including official reports, are about
forty-five in number. They deal with varied subjects, but the majority treat
of echinids, crinoids, or other echinoderms, for he made this class his
special study. Besides these he wrote two books, ‘The Depths of the Sea,’
already mentioned, and ‘The Voyage of the Challenger in the Atlantic,’ 2
vols. 1877. The latter gave a general account of the results of the
exploration of the Atlantic. His illness prevented him from continuing the
publication of the results of the expedition, and the heavy task was
undertaken in the beginning of 1881 by Dr. John Murray, a member of the
civilian staff. The series of volumes was completed in about thirteen years.
A marble bust of Wyville Thomson is in the university of Edinburgh, and a
memorial window was erected to his memory in the cathedral of Linlithgow.
The Voyage of the
Challenger
The Atlantic
A Preliminary Account of the General Results of the Exploring Voyage of
H.M.S. Challenger during the year 1873 and the early part of the year 1876,
by Sir C. Wyville Thomson, KNT., LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.SS.L. & E., F.L.S., F.G.S.,
Etc. Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh and
Director of the Civilian Scientific Staff or the "Challenger" Expedition
(1878)
Volume 1
Volume 2
The Depths of the Sea |
