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Born
Charles Darwin was born in Shropshire, England February 12 1809 -
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Education
He attended Edinburgh University Medical school in October 1825 at the age of 16, later in 1827 he attended the University of Cambridge until 1831 where he studied Greek, Latin and mathematics During his free time he became an avid botanist. -
Darwin's Voyage
Darwin joined Capt. Robert FitzRoy on a journey to the South American coast on the HMS Beagle after being inspired by the work of Alexander von Humboldt. Darwin studies the geology and animal life on the land. While studying the wild life he found many fossils. He began to formulate theories about how extinct and living animals related to one another. While visiting the Galapagos on of his most important discoveries was that the finch species beak varied per island. -
Return to England
Before returning Darwin was becoming famous due to the many specimens he had collected and sent home to England. He wrote the Zoology of the Voyage of the HMS Beagle, which included expert descriptions of all animal life he sent back. Also wrote a journal titled The Voyage of the Beagle. -
Geological Society
Darwin befriended geologist Charles Lyell, they discussed the rising Chilean coastline as a fellow of the Geological Society. Darwin was the secretary of the society by 1838 -
Catalog mistake and discovery
After returning he learned of a mistake made with the Galapagos islands finches. He had not separated them accordingly by location which lead to scientist John Gould to classify the birds. Gould told Darwin that the beaks were suited for different foods. He taught that maybe one type of bird had become all of the different species in the Galapagos islands due to changing to suit the food available. -
The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection
He believed too many animals are born, every animal struggles to live and only the most suited for the environment survive. Those who survive reproduce passing on their strong traits. He called this natural selection. He also noted that humans breed animals for certain traits and called it artificial selection. He noted that this process must happen in nature as well over long periods of time. -
Public eye
Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood (1808–96) . He rashly confided his thoughts on evolution, evidently shocking her. By now, he accepted the notion that even mental traits and instincts were randomly varying, and they were the stuff for selection. Her reaction pushed him to camouflage his views from the public. Darwin still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver of the universe. In 1839 he shut his last major evolution notebook, his theory largely complete -
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Expert on biological matters
Darwin added to his credibility as an expert on species by pursuing a detailed study of all known barnacles. Intrigued by their sexual differentiation, he discovered that some females had tiny degenerate males clinging to them. That sparked his interest in the evolution of diverging male and female forms from an original hermaphrodite creature. Four monographs on such an obscure group made him a world expert and gained him the Royal Society’s Royal Medal in 1853. -
Experiments to solidify his theory
Darwin experimented with seeds in seawater, to prove that they could survive ocean crossings to start the process of speciation on islands. Then he kept fancy pigeons, to see if the chicks were more like the ancestral rock dove than their own bizarre parents. Darwin perfected his analogy of natural selection with the fancier’s “artificial selection,” as he called it. He was preparing his rhetorical strategy, ready to present his theory. -
The Origin of Species by Means fo Natural Selection
The theory was now published. The book did distress his Cambridge patrons, but they were marginal to science now. However, radical Dissenters were sympathetic, as were the rising London biologists and geologists, even if few actually adopted Darwin’s cost-benefit approach to nature. The newspapers drew the one conclusion that Darwin had specifically avoided: that humans had evolved from apes, and that Darwin was denying mankind’s immortality. -
The Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are fertilized by Insects (1862)
He showed that the orchid’s beauty was not a piece of floral whimsy “designed” by God to please humans but honed by selection to attract insect cross-pollinators. The petals guided the bees to the nectarines, and pollen sacs were deposited exactly where they could be removed by a stigma of another flower. -
The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876)
Darwin’s botanical work was always subtly related to his evolutionary mechanism. He believed that cross-pollinated plants would produce fitter offspring than self-pollinators, and he used considerable ingenuity in conducting thousands of crossings to prove the point. -
The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species (1877)
Was the result of long-standing work into the way evolution in some species favoured different male and female forms of flowers to facilitate outbreeding. -
Death
He had a seizure in March 1882 and died of a heart attack on April 19. Influential groups wanted a grander commemoration than a funeral in Downe, something better for the gentleman naturalist who had delivered the “new Nature” into the new professionals’ hands.