Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies. ĭarwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School (at the time the best medical school in the UK) with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder. 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. Robert Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. Ī chalk drawing of the seven-year-old Darwin in 1816, with a potted plant, by Ellen Sharplesīoth families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism.
His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms (1881), he examined earthworms and their effect on soil. In 1871 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 (1872). Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations, and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's conception of gradual geological change, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.
Studies at the University of Cambridge ( Christ's College) encouraged his passion for natural science.
ĭarwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. However, many favoured competing explanations which gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. ĭarwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching 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.
His proposition that all species of life have descended from common ancestors is now widely accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. Hooker, Huxley, Romanes, Haeckel, LubbockĬharles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS ( / ˈ d ɑːr w ɪ n/ 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution.