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Birth and Early Life
Born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1809, Charles Darwin became the first scientist to describe evolution. In Scotland, at sixteen, he enrolled at Edinburgh University, where his father, a doctor, hoped he would graduate with a medical degree. Natural history piqued Darwin's interest more than medicine, as it was said that the sight of blood made him weak in the stomach. At Cambridge, he continued his study of theology, but he focused on natural history, which became his passion. -
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Charles Darwin aboard the HMS Beagle
Darwin traveled aboard the HMS Beagle as a naturalist in 1831, a ship of the British Royal Navy. Maps of South America were made as a result of the survey of the coastline and charting of its harbors. For most of his trip, Darwin collected plants, animals, rocks, and fossils on land. As well as remote islands like the Galápagos, he explored Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and other regions in South America. Other vessels were used to transport all his specimens back to England. -
Civil Unrest in London
Following the First Reform Act of 1832, Darwin developed his theory of evolution during those years of civil unrest. In response, radical nonconformists denounced the church's power and a status quo founded on miraculous props, such as the supernatural creation of life and society. In his breathless notes, Darwin shows how his Dissenting understanding of equality and antislavery framed his view of humanity's place in nature. -
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Charles Darwin rises to fame
Darwin settled as a gentleman geologist among the urban gentry. Having become a fellow of the Geological Society in January 1837, he was appointed secretary in 1838. After his diary was published in the Journal of Research into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle in 1839. Through the Cambridge network, he obtained a £1,000 Treasury grant to employ the best experts to describe his specimens in Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle from 1838-1843. -
Illness and Ideas in Early 1860s
The craggy, bearded Darwin was thin and ravaged by long periods of debilitating illness in the 1860s. His vomiting once lasted for 27 consecutive days. Protecting and cossetting the patriarch, she was a shield. As a Victorian, Darwin held to racial and sexual stereotyping. However, owing to his redoubtable wife, he still considered women inferior, and although a fervent abolitionist, he nonetheless considered blacks inferior. Despite this, few challenged these prejudices. -
The birth of Darwinism (Natural Selection)
Throughout six editions, Darwin experimented with the Origin and revised it as he went along. The causes of variation in domestic breeds are examined in Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication in 1868. The book addressed their concerns in response to critics such as George Douglas Campbell, the eighth Duke of Argyll. As a result, he hated Darwin's blind, accidental variation process and imagined "new births" as goal-directed events. -
The Death of Charles Darwin
In March 1882, he suffered a seizure and died of a heart attack on April 19. For the gentleman naturalist who had handed over the "New Nature" to new professionals, influential groups wanted a grander memorial than a funeral in Downe.