Edward Tyson

Who was Edward Tyson?

Edward Tyson was a British scientist and physician, commonly regarded as the founder of modern comparative anatomy, which compares the anatomy between species.

Tyson was born the son of Edward Tyson at Clevedon, in Somerset. He obtained a BA from Oxford in 1670, a MA from Oxford in 1673, and a MD from Cambridge in 1677. In 1684 he was appointed physician and governor to the Bethlem Hospital in London. 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.

In 1680, he studied a porpoise and established that porpoises are mammals. 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.