Charles Darwin

1809–1882

Born in Shrewsbury, Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh before moving to Cambridge. His natural-history interests and academic contacts helped secure a place on the Beagle voyage of 1831–1836, during which he recorded geology, organisms and their geographical distribution.

Specimens, diaries and observations from the voyage supplied evidence for later investigations. Darwin continued to compare and interpret this material after returning to Britain, developing his explanation through sustained research and correspondence.

References: [1]

Darwin connected variation, inheritance and unequal reproductive success to explain how favourable characteristics could accumulate over generations. In 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a paper developed independently around a related explanation.

Materials representing both men’s work were read at the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species followed in 1859, developing a larger argument about common descent, variation and natural selection.

References: [2] [3]

After the Origin, Darwin continued investigations of domesticated organisms, pollination, insectivorous plants and earthworms. Experiments and extensive correspondence allowed him to gather observations from beyond his immediate surroundings.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex appeared in 1871, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872. These works extended his inquiries to behaviour, sexual selection and humanity’s place in nature.

References: [1] [3]

Travellers, breeders, gardeners and other naturalists supplied information used in Darwin’s research. His explanation developed within this network and in exchange with contemporaries such as Wallace.

Darwin died in 1882. He did not possess the modern genetic account of inheritance. Later integration with genetics and population research developed evolutionary theory beyond the knowledge available in his nineteenth-century books.

References: [1] [4]