William Henry Flower

Sir William Henry Flower was an English surgeon, museum curator and comparative anatomist, born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire on 30 November 1831, who became a leading authority on mammals and especially on the primate brain. He was the second son of Edward Fordham Flower, founder of the town brewery. He attended University College London and then the Middlesex Hospital, where he studied medicine and surgery, and he graduated as an MB of London University in 1851 with a gold medal in physiology and a silver medal in zoology and comparative anatomy. He joined the British Army during the Crimean War as an assistant surgeon and received the Crimea Medal with clasps. He supported Thomas Henry Huxley in an important controversy with Richard Owen about the human brain, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1864, and eventually succeeded Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum in London.