|
Charles Darwin
 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.
|
 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.
|
