T. W. Bridge


Thomas William Bridge was a British zoologist who studied fish, and was particularly known for his research on the swim bladder in Siluridae. After working in Cambridge, he held professorships at the Royal College of Science for Ireland and Mason College/University of Birmingham. He was an elected fellow of the Royal Society.

Biography

Bridge was born on 5 November 1848 in Birmingham, to Lucy and Thomas Bridge, who made footwear. He attended Moseley School and then trained in science at the Birmingham and Midland Institute. He moved to Cambridge at the end of 1869, where he initially worked at the university's Zoology Museum directly for John Willis Clark, the museum's superintendent. In 1871, despite his lack of Cambridge degree, Bridge was appointed a university demonstrator in comparative anatomy, while continuing his work for Clark; the courses that Clark and Bridge organised were the first practical teaching of zoology at the university. Bridge read natural sciences, with a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained in Cambridge as a demonstrator after gaining his degree, apart from a brief stint at the Zoological Station in Naples in 1876.
He was professor of zoology at the Royal College of Science for Ireland in Dublin. In 1880, he returned to Birmingham to become one of the first four professors of the newly founded Mason College. Bridge held the chair in biology and was later the Mason Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, retaining the title when the college was subsumed into the University of Birmingham in 1900. He was active in the new institution's administration, for example, chairing the academic board.
He was awarded an Sc.D. by Cambridge and an M.Sc. by Birmingham, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1903. He served as president of the Birmingham [Natural History and Philosophical Society].
Bridge never married, and died on 29 or 30 June 1909 at Selly Park, Birmingham.

Research and writing

His research was on the comparative anatomy, morphology and osteology of vertebrates, predominantly fish. He was particularly known for his research on the swim bladder of Siluridae and its relationship with the auditory organ. With A. C. Haddon, he investigated a hundred species of Siluroid fish, and concluded that the air bladder was used to perceive changes in hydrostatic pressure rather than being involved in hearing, as had been proposed by Ernst Heinrich Weber.
Bridge also published on the osteology of ganoid fish and on vertebrate abdominal pores. He contributed a comprehensive article on the fishes to volume 7 of The Cambridge Natural History, which Sidney Harmer describes in his Royal Society obituary as a "most valuable summary of a very difficult subject". Bridge also published on other vertebrates including the bandicoot.

Selected publications