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Evolution of life begins
Charles Robert Darwin, (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors. Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his family's home -
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Charles Robert Darwin, (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882)
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors. -
Death of his mother
That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrews-bury School -
Intern at Medical School
Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School (at the time the best medical school in the UK) with his brother Erasmus in October 1825 -
Christ's College, Cambridge
Darwin annoyed his father by ignoring medical studies in Edinburgh, So he sent to join the ordinary degree course in January 1828 in Christ's College, Cambridge, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree. In this time, he will pursue beetle collecting and start getting published in James Francis Stephens’ Illustrations of British entomology -
Graduation
Graduates and leaves Cambridge 10 out of 178 candidates for an ordinary degree in June 1831. Spends the summer studying natural history in the tropics. Then Darwin later in august travels Wales to join Adam Sedgwick’s geology course and learn mapping. -
Sailing around the world dad!
August 29, 1831 Darwin returns home to find a letter from Henslowe proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on HMS Beagle with captain Robert Fitz Roy, for an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. -
Dad's a sucker! We got this.
Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time. Little did he know it would end up taking 5 years. Eventually he was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, to agree to fund his son's participation. -
Bon Voage
December 27, 1831 the five years expedition is on its way. Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while HMS Beagle surveyed and charted coasts. Darwin carefully tracked and documented his observations and theoretical speculations despite bouts with seasickness. Darwin was able to take copious amounts of notes while on aboard the HMS Beagle, most of them zoology notes about marine invertebrates -
Megatherium
The survey continued to the south in Patagonia. They stopped at Bahía Blanca, and in cliffs near Punta Alta Darwin made a major find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe. He identified the little-known Megatherium by a tooth and its association with bony armor, which had at first seemed to him to be like a giant version of the armor on local armadillos. -
Rock Star Status
When the ship returns to Falmouth, Cornwall October 2, 1836, Darwin was already a superstar in the scientific community. Zoologists had a huge backlog of work, and there was a danger of specimens just being left in storage. -
Transmutation????
In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B" notebook on Transmutation of Species -
Monkey See Monkey Do
In 1859, Darwin published a book On the Origin of Species that contained his theory of evolution. The evidence was so compelling that by 1870 the scientific community had accepted evolution as fact. Darwin had overcome earlier scientific rejection of concepts of transmutation of species and made scientific discovery that is the unifying theory for life sciences and explaining the diversity of life.
