Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, the son of a doctor and grandson of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. He began studying medicine at Edinburgh but could not bear operations without anesthetic, and then studied at Cambridge to become a clergyman, while collecting beetles and learning geology and botany. In 1831 he joined HMS Beagle as a naturalist on a five-year voyage around the world. In South America and the Galápagos Islands he collected fossils, plants and animals and noticed how species varied from place to place. Back in England he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, settled at Down House in Kent, and, often ill, spent twenty years gathering evidence for a theory that species change over long periods through natural selection, as individuals better suited to their surroundings survive and leave more offspring. When Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a paper with similar ideas, their work was presented together in 1858, and On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, provoking intense debate. He also wrote on barnacles, orchids, earthworms and human origins. He died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Charles Darwin is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: His mother's family were Unitarians; he was an agnostic. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica