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The Theroy of Evolution
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Birth
Charles Robert Darwin was born on Febuary 12, 1809 in Shropshire, England. -
A heartbreak.3
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 attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder. -
Alfred Russel
Even though we generally think the idea of natural selection was discovered by Charles Darwin, it turns out that he wasn't the concept's sole originator.Victorian naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, came up with the idea after years of living in the Far East, studying and collecting animal and plant specimens. -
All aboard!
Inquiries were made among professors at British universities, and a former professor of Darwin’s proposed him for the position aboard the Beagle. After taking his final exams at Cambridge in 1831, Darwin spent a few weeks on a geological expedition to Wales. He had intended to return to Cambridge that fall for theological training, but a letter from a professor, John Steven Henslow, inviting him to join the Beagle, changed everything. -
Voyage Time!
Beginning on 27 December 1831, the voyage lasted almost five years and, as he had intended, Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while the Beagle surveyed and charted coasts.He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge. -
Another Theroy...
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. -
"Two minds are better than one."
He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. -
Theroy
In 1858, Charles Darwin published a new evolutionary theory that was explained in detail -
Natural Selection
The theory was based on the idea of natural selection, and it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology. -
The Book!
He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. -
Death
Charles Darwin passed away on April 19, 1882 in Kent, England. -
1920-1940
The debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during 1920s through the 1940s. -
The 1930s-1940s
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology -
1950...
Following the establishment of evolutionary biology, studies of mutation and variation in natural populations, combined with biogeography and systematics, led to sophisticated mathematical and causal models of evolution. After the rise of molecular genetics in the 1950s, the field of molecular evolution developed, based on protein sequences and immunological tests, and later incorporating RNA and DNA. -
"Evolution is a theroy, not a fact."
In 2002, six parents in Cobb County, sued to have the following sticker removed from public school textbooks: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." -
Ruled out!
On January 14, 2005, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled that the stickers should be removed as they violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. -
Changes,
On February 19, 2008, the Florida State Board of Education adopted new science standards in a 4-3 vote. The new science curriculum standards explicitly require the teaching of the "scientific theory of evolution", whereas the previous standards only referenced evolution using the words "change over time." -
Declined
In July 2011, the Texas Board of Education, which oversees the Texas Education Agency, did not approve anti-evolution instructional materials
