Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory.

Naturalist Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in the tiny merchant town of Shrewsbury, England. He was the second youngest of six children. Darwin came from a long line of scientists. His father, Dr. R.W. Darwin, was as a medical doctor, and his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a renowned botanist. Darwin’s mother, Susanna, died when he was only 8 years old. Darwin was a child of wealth and privilege who loved to explore nature.

In October 1825, at age 16, Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh University along with his brother Erasmus. Two years later, Charles Darwin became a student at Christ's College in Cambridge. His father hoped he would follow in his footsteps and become a medical doctor, but the sight of blood made Darwin queasy. His father suggested he study to become a parson instead, but Darwin was far more inclined to study natural history.

The young Darwin learned much in Edinburgh’s rich intellectual environment, but not medicine: he loathed anatomy, and (pre-chloroform) surgery sickened him. His freethinking father, shrewdly realizing that the church was a better calling for an aimless naturalist, switched him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1828. In a complete change of environment, Darwin was now educated as an Anglican gentleman. He took his horse, indulged his drinking, shooting, and beetle-collecting passions with other squires’ sons, and managed 10th place in the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1831. Here he was shown the conservative side of botany by a young professor, the Reverend John Stevens Henslow, while that doyen of Providential design in the animal world, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, took Darwin toWales in 1831 on a geologic field trip.

Darwin’s tutor at Cambridge recommended him as a ‘gentleman naturalist’ on a voyage around the world on HMS Beagle. Darwin jumped at the chance.

Over the following five years, Darwin visited four continents, spending much of his time on land collecting specimens and investigating the local geology. He also had long periods with nothing to do but read and reflect. Books such as Charles Lyell's recently published Principles of Geology had a profound impact, making him think about slow processes which occur over vast periods of time. During the trip, Darwin also suffered terrible sea-sickness – the start of a life dogged by illness.

Leaving South America behind, HMS Beagle made a five-week stop at the Galapágos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.The Galapágos archipelago is a collection of small volcanic islands, each with a distinct landscape.Contrary to popular belief, Darwin did not have a great eureka moment on the Galapagos. He studied finches, tortoises and mockingbirds there, although not in enough detail to come to any great conclusions. But the steady accumulation of observations was building up.

Darwin did not conceive of a solution during the Beagle voyage, but rather a few years later in London, while writing books on his travels and studying the specimens he had collected. Experts in London, such as the ornithologist John Gould, were able to tell him how many of the specimens of plants and animals he had collected in the Galapagos Islands were unique species, found nowhere else. Clearly they resembled species from South America 600 miles away. It seemed to Darwin as if stray migrants from South America had come to the Galapagos, after the islands rose from the sea as volcanoes, and then changed over time in isolation on the islands.

He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that thisbranching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Meanwhile on 11 November 1838 Charles Darwin proposed to his cousin Emma Wedgwood. They married on 29 January 1839. As well as getting married Darwin was becoming more and more famous as a scientist. On 24 January 1839 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.Darwin's first son was born on 27 December 1839. Altogether he had 10 children.

For years Charles Darwin studied nature looking for evidence to support his theory. For much of that time he suffered from ill health.

Then in 1858 Charles Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace. It turned out that Wallace had independently devised a theory of evolution by natural selection.

Therefore Wallace's work and Darwin's theory were both presented to a scientific society called the Linnaean Society on 1 July 1858. The two men's work was also published in the society's journal.

Darwin was now galvanized into publishing his theory. So his monumental work The Origin of Species was published in 1859. It proved to be a bestseller. However Darwin's book also caused controversy.

In 1860 T. H. Huxley (a supporter of Darwin) had a public debate with Darwin's opponent Bishop Wilberforce (known as 'Soapy Sam'). The bishop was defeated and gradually the theory of evolution was accepted by most people.

Charles Darwin published 10 more books after 1859. Six were about botany, one was about earthworms. Only three were about evolution. One of these was The variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868). He also published The Descent of Man in 1871. In it he explained his ideas about the evolution of man. In 1872 Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Darwin's last book was on earthworms and it was published in October 1881 shortly before he died. Charles Darwin died of a heart attack on 19 April 1882. He was 73.