Thomas Rymer Jones

Thomas Rymer Jones was an English surgeon, academic and zoologist, born in 1810 and died in 1880, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The son of a Royal Navy captain, he trained in medicine and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1833, but his hearing impairment kept him from practising. In 1836 he was appointed the first professor of comparative anatomy at King's College London, and from 1840 to 1842 he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution. At the 1838 meeting of the British Association at Newcastle he was the sole opponent of Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, who maintained the polygastric nature of certain infusoria. His General Outline of the Animal Kingdom, and Manual of Comparative Anatomy, published with woodcuts in 1838 to 1841, became a standard textbook, and he also wrote popular books on zoology. He resigned his professorship in 1874.