Edward Tyson

Edward Tyson (20 January 1651 – 1 August 1708) was a British scientist and physician, commonly regarded as the founder of modern comparative anatomy, which compares the anatomy between species.

Biography

Tyson was born the son of Edward Tyson at Clevedon, in Somerset. He obtained a BA from Oxford on 8 February 1670, a MA from Oxford on 4th November 1673, and a MD from Cambridge in 1678. He was admitted to the College of Physicians on 30 September 1680 and as a Fellow in in April 1683. In 1684 he was appointed physician and governor to the Bethlem Hospital in London (the first mental hospital in Britain, second in Europe). He is credited with changing the hospital from a zoo of sorts to a place intended to help the inmates. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in November 1679. He is buried at St Dionis Backchurch.

Anatomical research

In 1680, Tyson studied a porpoise and established that porpoises are mammals. He noted that the convoluted structures of the brains were closer to those of land quadrupeds than those of fish. In 1698, he dissected a chimpanzee and the result was the book, Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. In this book he came to the conclusion that the chimpanzee has more in common with man than with monkeys, particularly with respect to the brain. This work was republished in 1894, with an introduction by Bertram C. A. Windle that includes a short biography of Tyson.