# Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Brady, Henry Bowman

​BRADY, HENRY BOWMAN (1835–1891), naturalist and pharmacist, son of Henry Brady, medical practitioner, of Gateshead, and his wife, Hannah Bowman of One Ash Grange, Derbyshire, was born at Gateshead on 23 Feb. 1835. He was educated at Friends' schools at Ackworth and at Tulketh Hall, near Preston. On leaving school in 1850 he was apprenticed to Thomas Harvey, a pharmaceutical chemist at Leeds. He afterwards studied under Dr. Thomas Richardson at the Newcastle College of Medicine, and in 1855, after passing the examination of the Pharmaceutical Society, set up in business for himself at 40 Mosley Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His energy and industry soon made him noted, and he ultimately carried on a large export trade, retiring from business in 1876. During this period he had been closely associated with the Pharmaceutical Society, served on its council several years, and at another period acted as one of its examiners. He was also originator of the British Pharmaceutical Congress, and president at the meetings in Brighton in 1872, and Bradford in 1873.
Brady became a fellow of the Linnean Society on 17 March 1859, but resigned in 1887; he was also a fellow of the Geological Society from 1864, of the Royal Society from 1874, serving on its council in 1888, and of the Zoological Society from 1888. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. of Aberdeen University in 1888, and was the recipient of a gold medal from the emperor of Austria in acknowledgment of assistance rendered to the Hof-Museum at Vienna. He was also made a corresponding member of the Imperial Geological Institute at Vienna, and an honorary member of the Royal Bohemian Museum at Prague.
He had never been strong in health, and often had to winter abroad. After 1876 he travelled a great deal, and twice went round the world. Resolving in 1890 to winter at Bournemouth, the unusually severe season proved fatal to him, and he died there, unmarried, on 3 Jan. 1891. He was buried at the Jesmond old cemetery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
A keen love of natural history, inherited from his father and fostered at his schools, led him to associate himself with the many eminent naturalists of his city, where he lectured on botany at the Durham College of Medicine. He early devoted special attention to the Foraminifera, on which he became the leading authority, his labours on this subject culminating in the 'Report on the Foraminifera collected by H.M.S. Challenger' (London, 1884, 2 vols. 4to), still the foremost work on this group of animals.
In addition to his great work, Brady was author of: 1. 'Monograph of the Foraminifera of the Crag. Part i.,' written in conjunction with William Kitchin Parker [q.v.] and Professor T. Rupert Jones, one of the alseontographical Society's Monographs, London, 1866, 4to. 2. 'Monograph of Carboniferous and Permian Foraminifera,' for the same society, London, 1876, 4to. 3. 'Catalogue of British recent Foraminifera,' written with J. D. Siddall, Chester, 1879, 8vo. He also contributed notes on the Foraminifera to Nares's 'Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea' (1878); on the Rhizopoda to Markham's 'Polar Reconnaissance' (1881); on Foraminifera to Tizard and Murray's 'Exploration of the Faroe Channel' (1882); and between 1861 and 1883 some thirty papers on these microzoa to various scientific journals.
The genus Bradyina, in the Foraminifera, was created in his honour by Valerian von Miiller in 1878.
[Newcastle Daily Journal, 15 Jan. 1891; Proc. Royal Soc. vol. 1. p. x; Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc. Proc. xlvii. 54; Geol. Mag. 1891, p. 95; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Nat. Hist. Mus. Cat.; Royal Soc. Cat.]
B. B. W.