Sir Anthony Carlisle FRCS, FRS (Stillington, England 15 February 1768 - London, 2 November 1842) was an English surgeon.

He was born in Stillington, County Durham, the third son of Thomas Carlisle and his first wife, and the half-brother of Nicholas Carlisle, FRS. He was apprenticed to medical practitioners in York and Durham, including his uncle Anthony Hubback and William Green. He later studied in London under John Hunter. In 1793 he was appointed Surgeon at Westminster Hospital in 1793, remaining there for 47 years. He also studied art at the Royal Academy ^[1]

In 1800 he and William Nicholson discovered electrolysis by passing a voltaic current through water, decomposing it into its constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen.^[2]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804. ^[3] He was Professor of Anatomy of the Society from 1808 to 1824.

In 1815 he was appointed to the Council of the College of Surgeons and for many years was a curator of their Hunterian Museum. He served as president of the society, by then the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1828 and 1839. He twice delivered their Hunterian Oration, causing consternation at his second oration in 1826 by using the occasion to talk about oysters, earning the epithet of Sir Anthony Oyster. He also delivered their Croonian lecture in 1804, 1805 and 1807.

He was Surgeon Extraordinary (1820-1830) to King George IV, by whom he was knighted on 24 Jul 1821.

It is likely that he was the author of The Horrors of Oakendale Abbey, a gothic novel published anonymously in 1797 attributed to a ‘Mrs Carver’.^[4]

He had married Martha Symmons, daughter of John Symmons, in 1800. On his death in 1842 he was buried in Kensal Cemetery.

• voltaic pile
• Timeline of hydrogen technologies