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Portrait of Charles Darwin

Science · Biology

Charles Darwin

1809–1882 · British (English)

Natural history; evolutionary biology

Charles Darwin was an English naturalist whose five-year voyage on HMS Beagle led him to the theory of evolution by natural selection. After the theory was presented jointly with Alfred Russel Wallace's in 1858, he published On the Origin of Species in 1859, transforming biology and humanity's view of its place in nature. His later books applied evolution to human origins, sexual selection, emotional expression, orchids, climbing and insectivorous plants and earthworms.

How to spot them

  • ▸HMS Beagle, Captain Robert FitzRoy, the Galápagos Islands and their finches
  • ▸On the Origin of Species (1859); 'endless forms most beautiful'
  • ▸Down House in Kent; grandson of Erasmus Darwin and of Josiah Wedgwood
  • ▸Born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, 12 February 1809
  • ▸Thomas Henry Huxley was 'Darwin's bulldog'

Key discoveries & works

On the Origin of Species (1859)

Published by John Murray on 24 November 1859; argued that species evolve by natural selection

The Voyage of the Beagle (Journal of Researches) (1839)

Account of the 1831–1836 round-the-world surveying voyage

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)

Applied evolution to human origins and developed the theory of sexual selection

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

Early study of the evolution of facial expressions, illustrated with photographs

The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881)

His last book, on how earthworms create soil; a surprise bestseller

Theory of atoll formation by subsidence (1842)

The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs: reefs grow upward as volcanic islands slowly sink

Key ideas

  • Natural selection: heritable variations that improve survival and reproduction become more common over generations
  • Common descent: all living things are related as branches of a single tree of life (his 1837 'I think' notebook sketch)
  • Sexual selection: traits such as the peacock's tail evolve through mate choice and competition for mates
  • Reading Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population in 1838 helped spark the idea of natural selection

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Shrewsbury; abandoned medicine at Edinburgh, then studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, where the botanist John Stevens Henslow recommended him for the Beagle
  • •HMS Beagle sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831 and returned on 2 October 1836
  • •Married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839 and lived at Down House, Downe, Kent, from 1842
  • •The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was coined by Herbert Spencer; Darwin adopted it in the 5th edition of the Origin (1869)
  • •Spent about eight years on a monograph on barnacles before publishing the Origin
  • •Awarded the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1864
  • •Buried in Westminster Abbey in 1882
  • •Appeared on the Bank of England £10 note from 2000 to 2018

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources