Bridge was born on 5 November 1848 in
Birmingham, to Lucy (
née Crosbee) and Thomas Bridge, who made footwear. He attended Moseley School and then trained in science at the
Birmingham and Midland Institute. He moved to
Cambridge at the end of 1869, where he initially worked at the
university's
Zoology Museum directly for
John Willis Clark, the museum's superintendent. In 1871, despite his lack of Cambridge degree, Bridge was appointed a university demonstrator in comparative anatomy (a teaching position), while continuing his work for Clark; the courses that Clark and Bridge organised were the first practical teaching of zoology at the university. Bridge read
natural sciences (1871–75), with a scholarship at
Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained in Cambridge as a demonstrator after gaining his degree, apart from a brief stint at the
Zoological Station in
Naples in 1876. He was professor of zoology at the
Royal College of Science for Ireland (1879–80) in
Dublin. In 1880, he returned to Birmingham to become one of the first four professors of the newly founded
Mason College (the others being
William A. Tilden,
Micaiah John Muller Hill and
John Henry Poynting). Bridge held the chair in biology (1880–82) and was later the Mason Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (1882–1909), retaining the title when the college was subsumed into the
University of Birmingham in 1900. He was active in the new institution's administration, for example, chairing the academic board. He was awarded an Sc.D. by Cambridge (1896) and an M.Sc. by Birmingham (1901), and was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society in 1903. He served as president of the
Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society (1894). Bridge never married, and died on 29 or 30 June 1909 at
Selly Park, Birmingham. ==Research and writing==