Charles
Darwin 1809-1882 
Charles Robert Darwin was born into a rich
family in
England in 1809. His father, Robert Waring Darwin, was a physician. His
grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was also a physician, but wrote
poetical inquiries into science, including speculations about
evolution.
As Darwin grew up and went to college, he had
no formal
training in science. But he spent a lot of time out in the woods
hunting, and collecting specimens of plants and animals, and attending
lectures of science classes at Cambridge in which he was not
enrolled.
Darwin's life-changing experience was to accompany
Captain Robert FitzRoy on H.M.S. Beagle as it sailed around the world.
This time, he did not merely collect specimens but began noticing
patterns of distribution and of fossils. He returned to England,
inherited a fortune, and spent his life without employment, which was
fortunate because he was ill throughout his life. He thought about what
he had seen on his voyage around the world, and as early as 1837 had
formulated an essentially modern version of evolutionary theory. He
spent the next twenty-two years refining the theory and gathering
evidence for it. He did not want to publish his theory until he had all
of the evidence. He published the Origin of Species in 1859 only
because a younger naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, was ready to
publish the same theory immediately after having thought of it independently
of Darwin.
Darwin continued to write books throughout his
life, on many topics that helped to illustrate how evolution worked and
the slow but sure processes of nature. He wrote books about orchid
pollination, the way plants grew, and how earthworms transformed entire
landscapes.
He was encouraged and supported by his wife
Emma, even though she did not accept evolution. Without Emma's help,
Charles Darwin would probably never have completed any of his important
works.
Stan's Darwin
Blog
Evolution Photos
the author with a Galapagos tortoise who was alive during Darwin's lifetime
Darwin fiction by Stanley Rice:
Liberation (how
Darwin met the ghost of Abraham Lincoln)
