Thomas Bell (zoologist)

Thomas Hornsey Bell was an English zoologist, dental surgeon and writer, born in Poole, Dorset, on 11 October 1792. He trained at Guy's and St Thomas's hospitals, combined dentistry with natural history and became professor of zoology at King's College London in 1836. Elected to the Royal Society in 1828, he served as its secretary from 1848 to 1853, was the first president of the Ray Society and was president of the Linnean Society in 1858. When Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage, Bell took on the reptile specimens and the crustaceans, and in 1837 he confirmed that the giant Galapagos tortoises were native to the islands. His British Stalk-eyed Crustacea is regarded as a masterwork. As Linnean Society president he chaired the meeting at which the Darwin and Wallace papers on natural selection were first read. He died in 1880.