Biography
Charles Darwin was born on Feb. 12, 1809, The Mount, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng. d. April 19, 1882, Down House, Downe, Kent. His full name is Charles Rbert Darwin. Darwin was an English naturalist renowned for his documentation of evolution and for his theory of its operation, known as Darwinism. His evolutionary theories, propounded chiefly in two works--On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)--have had a profound influence on subsequent scientific thought.
Darwin was the son of Robert Waring Darwin, who had one of the largest medical practices outside of London, and the grandson of the physician Erasmus Darwin, the author of Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life, and of the artisan-entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood. Darwin thus enjoyed a secure position in the professional upper middle class that provided him with considerable social and professional advantages.
Youth and Education
Darwin's mother died when he was eight years old. Otherwise he enjoyed a golden childhood, cosseted and encouraged by adoring sisters, an older brother, and the large Darwin and Wedgwood clans. He was keenly interested in specimen collecting and chemical investigations, but at the Shrewsbury school, where he was an uninspired student, the headmaster, Dr. Samuel Butler, stressed the classics and publicly rebuked Darwin for wasting his time with chemical experiments.
At age 16 he was sent to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was repelled by surgery performed without anesthetics. During his two years in Scotland Darwin benefited from friendships with the zoologist Robert Grant, who introduced him to the study of marine animals, and the geologist Robert Jameson, who fed his growing interest in the history of the Earth.
Enthusiasm for medicine
Disappointed by Darwin's lack of enthusiasm for medicine, his father sent him to the University of Cambridge in 1827 to study divinity. At the time Darwin adhered to the conventional beliefs of the Church of England. His academic record at Christ's College was as undistinguished as it had been at Edinburgh.
He socialized considerably with hunting, shooting, riding, and sporting friends. Cambridge did not yet offer a degree in the natural sciences, but, guided by his older cousin William Darwin Fox (an entomologist who inspired in him a lifelong passion for collecting beetles), Darwin met the circle of Cambridge scientists led by the cleric-botanist John Stevens Henslow. Soon a regular at Henslow's "open houses," Darwin accompanied him on daily walks and became known as "the man who walks with Henslow." Henslow encouraged Darwin's excitement about science and confidence in his own abilities.
On leaving Cambridge in the spring of 1831 Darwin, in preparation for a scientific trip to the Canary Islands, read Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, a scientific travelogue of a journey to Central and the northern parts of South America. At Henslow's recommendation he accompanied Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian professor of geology at Cambridge, on a three-week tour of North Wales to learn geologic fieldwork.
Invited to sail as the unpaid naturalist on HMS Beagle
In August 1831, at Henslow's recommendation to the Admiralty, Darwin was invited to sail as the unpaid naturalist on HMS Beagle. The ship was to survey the east and west coasts of South America and continue to the Pacific islands to establish a chain of chronometric stations. Henslow suggested Darwin as both an acute observer and a companion for the aristocratic young captain, Robert FitzRoy. (The Beagle already had a naturalist-surgeon, but one whom FitzRoy found socially unsuitable.) Robert Darwin first refused permission on grounds that it was dangerous and would not advance Charles in his career.
But upon the intercession of his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, he changed his mind. On Dec. 27, 1831, Charles Darwin sailed from Plymouth, Eng., on the Beagle, a 10-gun brig that had been refitted as a three-masted bark. The voyage, planned for two years, lasted five, during which Darwin kept meticulous notes and sent back geologic and biologic specimens.