George Busk

George Busk (1807 to 1886) was a British naval surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the son of a merchant. He studied surgery in London at St Thomas' Hospital and St Bartholomew's Hospital, was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Greenwich Hospital in 1832 and served as a naval surgeon in HMS Grampus and for many years in HMS Dreadnought, then used as a hospital ship by the Seamen's Hospital Society, where he made important observations on cholera and on scurvy. He retired from medicine in 1855 and devoted himself to zoology and palaeontology, becoming the leading authority on the Polyzoa and editing the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. He was Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1856 to 1859, became its President in 1871, and brought the Gibraltar Neanderthal skull to England. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1850.