Thomas Bell (zoologist)

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Thomas Bell FRS (October 11, 1792 - March 13, 1880) was an English zoologist, surgeon and writer, born in Poole, Dorset, UK.

Bell, like his mother Susan, took a keen interest in natural history which his mother also encouraged in his younger cousin Philip Henry Gosse. Bell left Poole in 1813 for his training as a dental surgeon in London. He combined two careers, becoming Professor of Zoology at King's College in 1836 (on the strength of his amateur researches) and lecturing on anatomy at Guy's Hospital. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1844. He was President of the Linnean Society in 1859.

Bell was at the heart of the scientific establishment and on Darwin's return to England, Bell was entrusted with the specimens of Crustacea collected on the HMS Beagle. He was the authority in this field; his book British Stalked-eye Crustacea is a masterwork. In his seventieth year Bell retired to Selborne where he took a keen interest in the amateur naturalist Gilbert White. In 1877 he published a new edition of White’s book The Natural History of Selborne. Bell died at Selborne in 1880.

[edit] Works

• 1832-36 A Monograph of the Testudinata 1832-36 - summarizes all the world’s turtles, living and extinct. The forty plates are by James de Carle Sowerby and Edward Lear

• 1844-1853. A History of the British Stalk-eyed Crustacea. John Van Voorst, Paternoster Row, London.