Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin was born on the 12th of February 1809 at his family's home, The Mount, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. His grandfathers Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both prominent abolitionists. Erasmus Darwin had praised general concepts of evolution and common descent in his Zoonomia (1794), a poetic fantasy of gradual creation including undeveloped ideas anticipating concepts his grandson expanded.
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 in attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder. Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat impoverished people in Shropshire, before going to the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825.
Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a Black Briton from Demerara in the South American rainforest, who had been taught there by Charles Waterton, and when brought to Scotland was freed from slavery. In Darwin's second year at the university, he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged orthodox religious concepts of science.
After leaving Sedgwick in Wales, Darwin spent a few days with student friends at Barmouth. He returned home on the 29th of August to find a letter from Henslow proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on with captain Robert FitzRoy, a position for a gentleman rather than "a mere collector". The ship was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, to agree to (and fund) his son's participation.
Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Darwin wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most of his zoology notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected during a calm spell. On their first stop ashore at St Jago in Cape Verde, Darwin found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which set out uniformitarian concepts of land slowly rising or falling over immense periods, and Darwin saw things Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book on geology.
When they reached Brazil, Darwin was delighted by the tropical forest, but detested the sight of slavery there, and disputed this issue with FitzRoy. The survey continued to the south in Patagonia. They stopped at Bahía Blanca, and in cliffs near Punta Alta, Darwin made a significant find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe. He found bony plates like a giant version of the armour on local armadillos.
On the 2nd of October 1836, Beagle anchored at Falmouth, Cornwall. Darwin promptly made the long coach journey to Shrewsbury to visit his home and see relatives. He then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding available naturalists to catalogue Darwin's animal collections and to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to be a self-funded gentleman scientist, and an excited Darwin went around the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe the collections.
In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B" notebook on Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first evolutionary tree. Early in March, Darwin moved to London to be near this work, joining Lyell's social circle of scientists and experts such as Charles Babbage, proposes a move on Friday the 3rd of March 1837, Darwin's Journal () backdated from August 1838 gives a date of the 6th of March 1837 who described God as a programmer of laws.
Continuing research in London, Darwin's wide reading now included the sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population. On the 28th of September 1838, he noted its assertion that human "population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio", a geometric progression so that population soon exceeds food supply in what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe. Darwin was well-prepared to compare this to Augustin de Candolle's "warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for existence among wildlife, explaining how the numbers of a species remained roughly stable.
By the start of 1856, Darwin was investigating whether eggs and seeds could survive travel across seawater to spread species across oceans. Hooker increasingly doubted the traditional view that species were fixed, but their young friend Thomas Henry Huxley was still firmly against the transmutation of species. Lyell was intrigued by Darwin's speculations without realising their extent. When he read a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace, "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species", he saw similarities with Darwin's thoughts.
His book was only partly written when, on the 18th of June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been "forestalled", Darwin sent it on that day to Lyell, as requested by Wallace. Although Wallace had not asked for publication, Darwin suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose. His family was in crisis, with children in the village dying of scarlet fever, and he put matters in the hands of his friends.
After some discussion, with no reliable way of involving Wallace, Lyell and Hooker decided on a joint presentation at the Linnean Society on the 1st of July of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. On the evening of the 28th of June, Darwin's baby son died of scarlet fever after almost a week of severe illness, and he was too distraught to attend. There was little immediate attention to this announcement of the theory.
Having published On the Origin of Species as an abstract of his theory, he pressed on with experiments, research, and writing of his "big book". He covered human descent from earlier animals, including the evolution of society and of mental abilities, as well as explaining decorative beauty in wildlife and diversifying into innovative plant studies. Enquiries about insect pollination led in 1861 to novel studies of wild orchids, showing adaptation of their flowers to attract specific moths to each species and ensure cross-fertilisation.
In 1862, Fertilisation of Orchids gave his first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection to explain complex ecological relationships, making testable predictions. Explorers in Madagascar had discovered an orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, with a sixteen-inch-long nectary. Darwin predicted the existence of a moth with a proboscis long enough to pollinate it; the pollen "would not be withdrawn until some huge moth, with a wonderfully long proboscis, tried to drain the last drop." Explorers in Madagascar discovered Xanthopan in 1903.
As his health declined, he lay on his sickbed in a room filled with inventive experiments to trace the movements of climbing plants. Admiring visitors included Ernst Haeckel, a zealous proponent of Darwinism incorporating Lamarckism and Goethe's idealism. Wallace remained supportive, though he increasingly turned to Spiritualism. His final book was The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms (1881).
In 1882, Darwin was diagnosed with what was called "angina pectoris" which then meant coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart. At the time of his death, the physicians diagnosed "anginal attacks" and "heart-failure"; there has since been scholarly speculation about his life-long health issues. Darwin died at Down House on the 19th of April 1882, aged 73. His last words were to his family, telling Emma, "I am not the least afraid of deathRemember what a good wife you have been to meTell all my children to remember how good they have been to me".
He had expected to be buried in St Mary's churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin's colleagues, after public and parliamentary petitioning, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for Darwin to be honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. The funeral, held on Wednesday, the 26th of April, was attended by thousands of people, including family, friends, scientists, philosophers, and dignitaries.
The Darwins had ten children: two died in infancy, and Annie's death at the age of ten had a devastating effect on her parents. Charles was a devoted father and uncommonly attentive to his children. Whenever they fell ill, he feared that they might have inherited weaknesses from inbreeding due to the close family ties he shared with his wife and cousin, Emma Wedgwood. He examined inbreeding in his writings, contrasting it with the advantages of outcrossing in many species.
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Common questions
When and where was Charles Darwin born?
Charles Robert Darwin was born on the 12th of February 1809 at The Mount, his family's home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin.
What significant fossil discovery did Charles Darwin make near Punta Alta during the voyage of the Beagle?
In cliffs near Punta Alta, Charles Darwin made a significant find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells. This discovery indicated recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe and included bony plates resembling giant versions of local armadillo armour.
How did Charles Darwin respond to receiving Alfred Russel Wallace's paper on natural selection in June 1858?
Upon receiving the paper from Alfred Russel Wallace on the 18th of June 1858, Charles Darwin sent it immediately to Lyell as requested by Wallace. Lyell and Hooker then decided on a joint presentation at the Linnean Society on the 1st of July to present both their theories together.
Where is Charles Darwin buried and when did his funeral take place?
Charles Darwin died at Down House on the 19th of April 1882 but was buried in Westminster Abbey close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton. The funeral took place on Wednesday the 26th of April and was attended by thousands including family friends scientists philosophers and dignitaries.
What prediction did Charles Darwin make about an orchid found in Madagascar in 1862?
In 1862 Charles Darwin predicted the existence of a moth with a proboscis long enough to pollinate the Angraecum sesquipedale orchid which has a sixteen-inch-long nectary. Explorers discovered Xanthopan in 1903 confirming this prediction.