Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin (1809-82), British naturalist. At university Darwin studied first medicine and then theology, but he abandoned both to pursue his consuming interest — natural history. In 1831 he accepted the post of ship’s naturalist on a voyage to South America and the Pacific in HMS Beagle. He returned in 1836 and spent the next 20 years using the information collected on the voyage to formulate his theory of evolution; his famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859. Dar-win believed that living species were not created individually but developed over a long period of time, from ancestors similar to them, in a struggle for existence that resulted in the survival of the fittest. This view was in direct opposition to the established ideas of the day, based implicitly on the word of the Bible, And Darwin’s book aroused much controversy. Many people refused to accept that man had evolved from ape-like ancestors and was not divinely created. Darwin subsequently published several other books, including The Descent of Man (1871), and his theory gradually gained acceptance. The influence of the Church, however, was strong enough to prevent his receiving any official honours from the state during his lifetime.
“I do not see that Darwin’s supreme service to his fellow men was his demonstration of evolution…Darwin’s supreme service was that he won for man absolute freedom in the study of the laws of nature. H. F. Osborn, Impressions of Great Naturalists”
