Timeline: Henry Gray, 1825–1961

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Henry Gray was an English surgeon and anatomist, who is best known as the original author of Gray's Anatomy, the definitive work on human anatomy.

Gray was born in 1827, and in 1845 he enrolled as a student at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London. In 1848, he won a prize from the Royal College of Surgeons for an essay on the nerves in the human eye. At the young age of 25, Gray became a fellow of the Royal Society, and by 1853, he was an anatomy lecturer at his alma mater.

Gray's most famous accomplishment occurred in 1858, when he published Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. Intended for medical students, physicians, and surgeons, the first edition of the book contained 750 pages and 363 figures based on Dr. Henry Vandyke Carter's drawings.

In 1861, Henry Gray contracted smallpox from his nephew and died. Gray's Anatomy, continued by other authors, has lived on as the authoritative anatomy text and an indispensable teaching tool. Later editions of the book aimed to be a compendium of all current anatomical and medical knowledge, and the 39th and, to date, latest edition of Gray's Anatomy (Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice) was published in 2004, and has more than doubled the number of pages from its first appearance in 1858.

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