Biography of Charles Darwin

Introduction

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was born in Shrewsbury, England. He was a man of extraordinary patience and humility. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor: the birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers -- all related. During his tenure as a student at Cambridge, Darwin's professor John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) recommended Darwin to Captain Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865) of the HMS Beagle, who was in need of a naturalist.

Biography of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England on February 12, 1809. He was the son of Robert Warren Darwin, a family doctor and of Susannah Wedgewood Darwin daughter of a porcelain manufacturer. His grandfather, in fact, was the great English poet Erasmus Darwin. His early school training was at a small schoolhouse in Shrewsbury. After which his father put him into Edinburgh University in 1825 to 1827 for medical studies. Darwin showed no interest in being a physician after witnessing several major operations without anesthesia. He was then sent to be a pastor in the Church of England. He studied at Christ College at Cambridge University in 1828.

He lost his interest in Holy order by the end became interested in something never before, Natural History. In 1831 he graduated from Cambridge with a B.A. He met many connections that were his allies in a "war" against the scientific community's belief of how evolution does occur.

Infact, one of his "connections" a professor and friend of his, Johns Stevens Henslow endorsed Darwin for an unpaid position as naturalist on a scientific five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. The ship took off on December 27, 1831, to explore and evaluate the western coast of South America and several islets of the coast of South America. Its Secondary mission was to set up Navigational posts along the coastline. Darwin was to learn of the biological and geological (of which he was not educated for!) Developments of the areas.

British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) began drafting Origin of Species in 1842, just six years after returning from his fateful five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle (1831-36). Heavily influenced by Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-1833, a three volume work) and Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Origin of Species was ultimately published in 1859. In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin introduced the concept of natural selection. Natural selection is a natural process which acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous variations within living systems. Suppose a member of a species was to develop a functional advantage (a reptile grew wings and learned to fly); its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it on to future offspring. Natural selection would act to preserve the advantageous trait.

Darwin made a keen observation but he drew a poor conclusion. He thought that since natural selection can and does produce slight variations within animal populations it should therefore be able to explain all of the variety ...