Charles Darwin Birthday

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his family’s home, The Mount. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin.

Charles Darwin Biography

The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for natural history. He started collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died.

Darwin 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.

He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831. He studied Paley’s Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.

Charles Darwin Island

Darwin spent a week with student friends at Barmouth.

He then returned home on 29 August 1831 to find a letter from Henslow proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on HMS Beagle with captain Robert FitzRoy.

He laid emphasis that this was a position for a gentleman rather than “a mere collector”. Beagle reached the Galápagos Islands on 15 September 1835.

Darwin had learnt from Henslow about studying the geographical distribution of species, and particularly of linked species on oceanic islands and on nearby continents, so he endeavoured to collect plants in flower. He found widespread “wretched-looking” thin scrub thickets of only ten species, and very few insects.

Beagle sailed on to Charles Island. People noticed that tortoises differed in the shape of the shells from island to island. Darwin noted Lawson’s statement that on seeing a tortoise he could “pronounce with certainty from which island it has been brought”.

On 1 October he landed near Tagus Cove and explored Beagle Crater. There he saw his first Galapagos land iguanas.

Water pits were disappointingly inadequate for drinking, but attracted swarms of small birds and Darwin made his only note of the finches he was not bothering to label by island. He caught a third species of mockingbird.

After passing the northern islands of Abingdon, Tower and Bindloe, they busily collected all sorts of specimens while Beagle went back to Chatham Island for fresh water. After further surveying, Beagle set sail for Tahiti on 20 October 1835.

Charles Darwin Theory

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. He overcome scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.

By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact.

However, many favoured competing explanations 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.

Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

Charles Darwin Information

Emma Wedgwood accepted Charles’ marriage proposal on 11 November 1838 at the age of 30, and they were married on 29 January 1839 at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Maer.

Charles and Emma raised their 10 children in a distinctly non-authoritarian manner, and several of them later achieved considerable success in their chosen careers: George, Francis and Horace became Fellows of the Royal Society.

In 1882 he 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”.

Today doctors speculated that Darwin might be suffering from chronic Chagas disease. He died at Down House on 19 April 1882.

Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Since 2008, a statue of Charles Darwin occupies the place of honour at London’s Natural History Museum.

Charles Darwin Book

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. He overcome scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.

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).

His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould. In his later book the Actions of Worms (1881), he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.

Charles Darwin Quotes

His last words were to his family, telling Emma “I am not the least afraid of death—Remember what a good wife you have been to me—Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me.

“We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.”

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”

“Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.”’

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”