Henry Gray

Henry Gray (1827 - 13 June 1861) was an English anatomist and surgeon most notable for publishing the book Gray's Anatomy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) at the age of 25.He was born in Belgravia, London, in 1827 and lived most of his life in London.In 1845, Gray entered as a student at St. George’s Hospital, London (then situated in Belgravia, now in Tooting), and he is described by those who knew him as a most painstaking and methodical worker, and one who learnt his anatomy by the slow but invaluable method of making dissections for himself.While still a student, in 1848 he secured the triennial prize of Royal College of Surgeons for an essay entitled “The Origin, Connexions and Distribution of nerves to the human eye and its appendages, illustrated by comparative dissections of the eye in other vertebrate animals”.In 1852, at the early age of 25, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year he obtained the Astley Cooper prize of three hundred guineas for a dissertation “On the structure and Use of Spleen”.In 1858 Gray published the first edition of Anatomy, which covered 750 pages and contained 363 figures. He had the good fortune of securing the help of his friend Henry Vandyke Carter, a skilled draughtsman and formerly a demonstrator of anatomy at St. George’s Hospital. Carter made the drawings from which the engravings were executed, and the success of the book was, in the first instance, undoubtedly due in no small measure to the excellence of its illustrations. This edition was dedicated to Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, Bart, FRS, DCL. A second edition was prepared by Gray and published in 1860. The book is still published under the title Gray's Anatomy and is widely appreciated as an extraordinary and authoritative textbook for medical students.He held successively the posts of demonstrator of Anatomy, curator of the museum, and Lecturer of Anatomy at St. George’s Hospital, and was in 1861 a candidate for the post of assistant surgeon.Gray was struck by an attack of confluent smallpox, which he contracted while looking after a nephew who was suffering from that disease. He died in London on 13 June 1861 at the age of 34 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery