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Darwin,
Charles Robert was a British scientist who
laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development
of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection. His work has been
of major influence on the life and earth sciences and on modern
thought in general.
Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on February 12, 1809, Darwin was the fifth child of a wealthy and sophisticated family. After he left Edinburgh in 1825 and went to the University of Cambridge, in preparation for a life as a Church of England clergyman. At Cambridge he came under the influence of two figures, Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow. Henslow not only helped build Darwin’s self-confidence but also taught his student to be a meticulous and painstaking observer of natural phenomena and collector of specimens. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, Darwin was taken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle, largely on Henslow’s recommendation, as an unpaid naturalist on a scientific expedition round the world. This voyage determined Darwin’s whole future career.
When Darwin returned to England in 1836, he was a mature scientist. His letters and packages of specimens sent to Sedgwick, Henslow, and others during his voyage had established his reputation at home. He immediately threw himself into the work of preparing his share of an extensive report of the scientific discoveries made during the Beagle voyage, and editing his own travel diary for publication. Darwin’s Journal of Researches (1839) achieved popular as well as scientific acclaim, and it was followed in 1844 and 1846 by further volumes on volcanic islands and on the geology of South America.
In July 1837 Darwin opened a private notebook entitled "Transmutation of Species", in which he recorded observations and speculations bearing on the question. His thinking on how organisms evolve was brought into sharp focus in September 1838, when he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus. Darwin immediately saw the relevance of Malthus’s work for his own thinking. In 1838, 1842, and 1844 he produced increasingly elaborate private versions of his evolutionary theory.
In 1856, after eight years of sustained work on fossil and living barnacles, Darwin at last began work on a volume that he intended to call Natural Selection. It was interrupted in 1858, when Alfred Russel Wallace, a young naturalist then working in Malaysia, sent Darwin his own brief sketch of evolution through natural selection. Lyell, who had been privy to Darwin’s own evolutionary thinking, arranged for a joint presentation of Wallace’s sketch and a brief essay by Darwin at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. Darwin was then stimulated to write On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It sold out on the first day of publication in November 1859 and went through five further editions in Darwin’s lifetime.
In a deliberate attempt to make his ideas more acceptable, Darwin did not discuss human evolution in the Origin, confining himself to a single sentence: "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". Nevertheless, his private notebooks make it clear that he recognized from the beginning that human beings were also part of the evolutionary process.
Darwin kept revising successive editions of the Origin, to account for various scientific criticisms that were raised. In addition, he produced a series of monographs that elaborated different aspects of matters discussed in the Origin. The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868) expanded the analogy between "artificial" and natural selection, pointing out that animal and plant breeders could produce significant new variations simply by selectively breeding offspring. Darwin was also a gifted botanist who used his own gardens at Down to great effect. In the last two decades of his life he wrote five botanical books, describing a wide range of observational and experimental work.
By the time he died on April 19, 1882, Darwin was a world-famous scientist. He had been given many with honours and awards. Despite the controversial nature of many of his ideas, the scientific establishment recognized his worth and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.