The Scottish zoologist and chief scientist on the 'Challenger' expedition Charles Wyville Thomson was born at Bonsyde in Linlithgow, West Lothian, on 5 March 1830. He was the son of a surgeon in the service of the British East India Company, and was baptized Wyville Thomas Charles Thomson. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School and then he studied at Edinburgh University.

In 1850 he was appointed Lecturer on Botany at Kings College, Aberdeen, and then Professor of Botany at Marischal College, Aberdeen. In 1853 he became a Professor of Natural History in Queen's College, Cork, Ireland, succeeding Professor Hincks. A year later he was nominated to the Chair of Mineralogy and Geology at the Queen's University of Belfast, and in 1860 was transferred to the Chair of Natural History at the same institution.

In 1868 he assumed the duties of Professor of Botany at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, and finally in 1870 he received the Chair of Natural History at Edinburgh University.

Wyville Thomson is remembered for his studies of the biological conditions of the deep seas. Being interested in crinoids, and prompted by the results of dredgings in the deep sea off the Norwegian coasts, he persuaded the Royal Navy to grant him use of HMS Lightning and HMS Porcupine for deep sea dredging expeditions in the summers of 1868 and 1869. These researches showed that animal life existed down to depths of 650 fathoms (1200 m), that all marine invertebrate groups are present at this depth, and that deep-sea temperatures are not as constant as had been supposed, but vary considerably, and indicate oceanic circulation. These results were described in his work The Depths of the Sea. The results which Thomson had demonstrated, in addition to the growing demands of ocean telegraphy, soon led to the Royal Navy to grant use of HMS Challenger for a global expedition. He was selected as chief scientist, and the ship sailed on 23 December 1872. The Challenger Expedition would be deemed a great success, and on his return Wyville Thomson received a number of academic honours, as well as a knighthood. In 1877 he was also created a Knight of the Polar Star on a visit to Sweden.

Thomson's published work includes The Depths of the Sea (1873) and The Voyage of the Challenger in the Atlantic (1880).

Professor Sir Charles Wyville Thomson died at Bonsyde on 10 March 1882.