Charles Darwin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Darwin


Born 12 February 1809(1809-02-12)
Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England
Died 19 April 1882 (aged 73)
Down House, Downe, Kent, England

Residence England
Nationality British
Fields Naturalist
Institutions Royal Geographical Society
Alma mater University of Edinburgh
University of Cambridge
Academic advisors Adam Sedgwick
John Stevens Henslow
Known for The Voyage of the Beagle
On The Origin of Species
Natural selection
Influences Charles Lyell
Influenced Thomas Henry Huxley
George John Romanes
Notable awards Royal Medal (1853)
Wollaston Medal (1859)
Copley Medal (1864)
Religious stance Church of England, though Unitarian family background, Agnostic after 1851.
Signature

Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist,^[I] who realised and demonstrated that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s,[1] and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life.[2]

At Edinburgh University Darwin neglected medical studies to investigate marine invertebrates, then the University of Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science.[3] His five-year voyage on HMS BeagleTemplate:WP Ships HMS instances established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838.[4] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority.[5] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.[6]

His 1859 book On the Origin of Species established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.[1] He examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.[7]

In recognition of Darwin’s pre-eminence, he was one of only five 19th-century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral,[8] and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.[9]

Biography

Early life

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount.[10] He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father’s side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s side. Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in the Anglican Church, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. The eight year old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.[11]

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going with Erasmus to the University of Edinburgh. He found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his medical studies. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest, and often sat with this "very pleasant and intelligent man".[12]

In Darwin’s second year he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural history group whose debates strayed into radical materialism. He assisted Robert Edmund Grant’s investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and in March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck’s evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished, but had recently read the similar ideas of his grandfather Erasmus and remained indifferent.[13] Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jameson’s natural history course which covered geology including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learnt classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.[14]

This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to Christ’s College, Cambridge, for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson.[15] Darwin began there in January 1828, but preferred riding and shooting to studying. His cousin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which he pursued zealously, getting some of his finds published in Stevens' Illustrations of British entomology. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as “the man who walks with Henslow”. When exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley's Evidences of Christianity.[16] In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of a pass list of 178.[17]

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June. He studied Paley's Natural Theology which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.[18] He read John Herschel's new book which described the highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of scientific travels. Inspired with "a burning zeal" to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. In preparation, he joined Adam Sedgwick's geology course then went with him in the summer mapping strata in Wales.[19] After a fortnight with student friends at Barmouth, he returned home to find a letter from Henslow proposing Darwin as a suitable (if unfinished) gentleman naturalist for a self-funded place with captain Robert FitzRoy, more as a companion than a mere collector, on HMS BeagleTemplate:WP Ships HMS instances which was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America.[20] His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son’s participation.[21]