Charles Thomas Hudson facts for kids

Charles Thomas Hudson (born March 11, 1828 – died October 23, 1903) was an English scientist who loved studying tiny living things, especially a type of microscopic animal called a rotifer. He spent much of his life looking at these creatures through a microscope and sharing his discoveries.

Early Life and School Days

Charles Hudson was born in 1828 in Brompton, London. He was one of five sons. His father was John Corrie Hudson. Charles went to school at Kensington Grammar School and The Grange in Sunderland. He was good at music and even wrote songs when he was young.

Because of his family's situation, Charles started working as a teacher quite early. He taught in Glasgow and then at the Liverpool Royal Institution. In 1848, he went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he earned his degree in 1852. Later, he became a master at Bristol Grammar School in 1852 and then its headmaster in 1855.

He left this job in 1860 and opened his own private school in Clifton, Bristol, in 1861. He ran this school until 1881. Charles Hudson's wide range of interests made his school very popular. After leaving teaching, he lived in Clifton, then moved to Dawlish, Devon, and later to Shanklin, Isle of Wight. In his later years, he often gave talks about natural history at schools. He used special colored slides that he made himself to show what he was talking about.

Discovering Tiny Worlds

Charles Hudson spent his free time looking through microscopes. He was especially interested in Rotifera, which are tiny, often transparent animals found in fresh water. They are sometimes called "wheel-animalcules" because they have a crown of tiny hairs that look like a spinning wheel.

His first scientific paper was about a rotifer called Rhinops Vitrea in 1869. After that, he wrote many more papers for scientific journals. He described new types of rotifers, and one of his most exciting discoveries was a rotifer called Pedahon mirum.

In 1872, he became a member of the Royal Microscopical Society. He was even the president of this society from 1888 to 1890.

His most famous work was a book called The Rotifera: or Wheel-Animalcules, which he wrote with Philip Henry Gosse. This book was published in 1886–87 and became the most important book on rotifers. Because of this amazing work, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1889. Charles Hudson was also a talented artist, and his drawings made the illustrations in The Rotifera very special.

Charles Hudson passed away in Shanklin on October 23, 1903, and was buried there.

The Hudson Transparencies

The Hudson Transparencies are a collection of 58 large, framed screens made by Charles Hudson around the 1880s. He created these as teaching tools. He cut shapes out of paper and decorated them with tissue paper, which he painted with watercolor designs. When light shines through these transparencies from behind, they show amazing images of microscopic organisms.

These special transparencies are now kept at the University of Exeter's Special Collections Department. A study of them was done in 2011, and they were listed and described for the first time in a scientific article.