Philip Henry Gosse, known to his friends as Henry, was an English naturalist and populariser of natural science, an early improver of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Gosse created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium" when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854. His work was the catalyst for an aquarium craze in early Victorian England.
Gosse in 1855
From Philip Henry Gosse, British Sea-Anemones and Corals, 1860.
Philip Henry Gosse and his son Edmund Gosse, 1857. Frontispiece of Father and Son.
An aquarium is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aquatic reptiles, such as turtles, and aquatic plants. The term aquarium, coined by English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, combines the Latin root aqua, meaning 'water', with the suffix -arium, meaning 'a place for relating to'.
The underwater tunnel in the London aquarium
A freshwater aquarium with plants and various tropical fish
Cat and fishbowl, after Isoda Koryusai. Original c. 1775.
Goldfish in a glass: portrait of Therese Krones, 1824