Philip Henry Gosse English naturalist, inventor of the aquarium Date of Birth: 06.04.1810 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Philip Henry Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse was born on April 6, 1810 in Worcester, England. He was an English naturalist and the inventor of the aquarium. Gosse developed a passion for biology from an early age and at the age of 17, he found himself in Canada where he worked for a fishing company while studying the local nature in his spare time. His initial love was for butterflies and various beetles, but it was the fish that captured his heart.

Gosse later discovered that the goldfish had been bred by the Chinese over a thousand years before our era. He went on to travel extensively and collected insects between 1827 and 1838 in Newfoundland, Canada, Alabama, and then Jamaica, acquainting the European public with the local flora and fauna. By 1850, he had made a firm decision to dedicate the rest of his life primarily to the study of marine life.

In 1853, Gosse's project for the world's first aquarium came to fruition with the opening of the aquarium in London's Regent's Park. The naturalist solved the challenging task of providing marine creatures with oxygen. This idea gained popularity, and public aquariums soon appeared in Paris, Berlin, and Naples. Gosse was also a well-known theologian and a passionate advocate for Christian ideas.

After the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," Gosse became a staunch opponent and argued against the idea that humans could have evolved from apes. Philip Henry Gosse passed away on August 23, 1888 in Torquay, England. Today, his disputes with Darwin are largely forgotten, but the aquarium he invented has become an integral part of everyday life.