-
Date of Birth
Charles Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. -
Medical School to Theology
Darwin attended medical school at the university of Edinburgh. It was there that he watched a surgery on a child. During that time they did not use anesthetic or even antiseptics, so the surgery would have been done without them. After watching this surgery Darwin was so traumatized that he dropped the course and went to Cambridge University to study theology. -
HMS Beagle Voyage that led to Discovery
During Darwin’s five year voyage on the HMS Beagle he traveled to foreign lands and encountered various different lifeforms, many of which he had never seen before. He also collected plants, animals and fossils and took detailed field notes about them. This evidence would later help support his theory of natural selection. -
Theories and Finches
Upon returning to England Darwin continued collecting and observing specimens for several years before finally declaring his theory that evolution occurs by natural selection. Some of the evidence he used to support this theory was finches he collected from the Galapagos islands. He discovered the finches from different islands had different beaks that were adapted to the various food sources that were available, and that they seemed to be descendants of a singular ancestor. -
Look at all those finches!
From what Darwin observed while traveling, he suspected that the environment could influence species evolution over time. Due to the fact that he could not find a way to investigate this effectively in the wild, he experimented with artificial selection in pigeons. Using artificial selection he created different offspring by crossing birds with certain features. His experiments using artificial and natural selection helped him explain his theory of evolution in his book On the Origin of Species. -
Date Of Passing
Darwin passed away on April 19th, 1882 from a heart attack. -
Citation-1
Charles Darwin: History's most famous biologist. Natural History Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2023, from https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/charles-darwin-most-famous-biologist.html -
Citation-2
Campbell, V. (2015, May 29). Darwin's other bird-the domestic pigeon. All About Birds. Retrieved February 24, 2023, from https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/darwins-other-bird-the-domestic-pigeon/# -
Citation-3
Charles Darwin. Galapagos Conservation Trust. (2021, August 26). Retrieved February 24, 2023, from https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/about-galapagos/history/charles-darwin/