Charles Darwin
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Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the son of Robert Waring Darwin and his
wife Susannah; and the grandson of the scientist Erasmus Darwin, and of the potter Josiah
Wedgwood. His mother died when he was eight years old, and he was brought up by his sister. He
was taught classics at Shrewsbury, then sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, which he hated, and
a final attempt at educating him was made by sending him to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study
theology (1827). During that period he loved to collect plants, insects, and geological specimens,
guided by his cousin William Darwin Fox, an entomologist. His scientific inclinations were
encouraged by his botany professor, John Stevens Henslow, who was instrumental, depsite heavy
paternal opposition, in securing a place for Darwin as a naturalist on the surveying expedition of
HMS Beagle to Patagonia (1831-6).
Under Captain Robert Fitzroy, he visited Tenerife, the Cape Verde Is, Brazil, Montevideo, Tierra
del Fuego, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Chile, the Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Tasmania. In
the Keeling Is he devised his theory of coral reefs. During this five-year expedition he obtained
intimate knowledge of the fauna, flora, and geology of many lands, which equipped him for his
later investigations. By 1846 he had published several works on the geologcial and zoological
descoveries of his voyage- works that placed him at once in the front rank of scientists. He
developed a friendship with Sir Charles Lyell, became secretary of the Geological Society
(1838-41), and in 1839 married his cousin Emma Wedgewood (1808-96).
From 1842 he lived at Down House, Downe, Kent, a country gentleman among his gardens,
conservatories, pigeons, and fowls. The practical knowledge he gained there, especially in variation
and interbreeding, proved invaluable. Private means enabled him to devote himself to science, in
spite of continuous ill-health: it was not realized until after his death that he had suffered from
Chagas's diasease, which he had contracted from an insect bite while in South America.
At Down House he addressed himself to the great work of his life- the problem of the origin of
species. After five years of collecting the evidence, he began to speculate on the subject. In 1842
he drew up his observations in some short notes, expanded in 1844 into a sketch of conclusions for
his own use. These embodied the principle of natural selection, the germ of the Darwinian Theory,
but with typical caution he delayed publication of his hypothesis.
However, in 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a memoir of the Malay Archipelago, which, to
Darwin's surprise, contained in essence the main ideas of his own theory of natural selection. Lyell
and Joseph Hooker persuaded him to submit a paper of his own, based on his 1844 sketch, which
was read simultaneously with Wallace's before the Linnean Society in 1858. Neither Darwin nor
Wallace was present on that historic occasion.
Darwin then set to work to condense his vast mass of notes, and put into shape his great work,
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859. This epoch-making work,
received througout Europe with the deepest interest, was violently attacked because it did not
agree with the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis. But eventually it succeeded in
obtaining recognition from almost all biologists.
Darwin continued to work at a series of supplemental treatises: The Fertilization of Orchids (1862),
The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (1867), and The Descent of Man and
Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), which postulated that the human race derived from a hairy
animal belonging to the great anthropoid group, and was related to the progenitors of the
orang-utan, chimpanzee, and gorilla. In his 1871 work he also developed his important
supplementary theory of sexual selection.
Later works include The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Insectivorous Plants
(1875), The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876), Different
Forms of Flowers in Plants of the Same Species (1877), and The Formations of Vegetable Mould
through the Action of Worms (1881).
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