BIOGRAPHY

CHARLES DARWIN

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930L

BornFebruary 12, 1809Shrewsbury, England

DiedApril 19, 1882Downe, England By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela

NATURALIST & AUTHOR

CHARLES DARWIN

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Before the 19th century, scholars generally assumed that living organisms remained as they were created, never changing. Charles Darwin shattered this idea by presenting evidence that species do change over time, in a process he called natural selection.

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Setting out to seaCharles Robert Darwin was born the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809. Both of these men helped reshape the way we look at the human race.

Darwin was the fifth of six children. His father was a successful doctor and businessman. His mother came from a wealthy family. She died when Darwin was 8, and his older sisters raised him. His family belonged to the Unitarian Church and was anti-slavery. Both of these were uncommon in that time. Darwin considered himself a religious man.

Darwin’s father pushed him toward medicine, and then religious studies, but Darwin had his heart set on becoming a naturalist. He went to university in Scotland, and finished at Cambridge University in England.

When he was 22, Darwin joined a ship going on a two-year voyage along the coast of South America. The trip on the HMS Beagle ended up lasting almost

five years and going around the world. It gave Darwin the opportunity to observe natural life in many different settings.

Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands, a unique set of 14 islands about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, on the western side of South America. He found animals and birds slightly different from each other on each island. He collected many specimens to take back to England. Famously, he brought back many different finches.

After returning to England, Darwin showed his finches to bird experts called ornithologists. They told him that he had about a dozen species of finches, different from those seen anywhere else.

Darwin examined the birds’ beaks. He saw how each bird’s beak was adapted to the type of seeds available on its island. The shape of each beak had developed from the need for food.

Darwin wrote reports about his trip. Soon he was elected to the prestigious Royal Society of London, a group of famous scientists. Shortly after, Darwin married a cousin of his, Emma Wedgwood. They had 10 children. Two died shortly after birth and one died at age 10. Emma and Charles were very hap-py together. Near the end of his life, he told his children that she had been his greatest blessing.

Painting of the HMS Beagle at Tierra Del Fuego, by Conrad Martens

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Darwin’s key ideaDarwin was only 30, but he had already formulated his key idea: small changes occur when creatures reproduce. Some creatures are helped by these changes. Those creatures are more likely to reproduce and pass on those characteristics to their offspring.

Over enough time, these changes can result in new species, as happened on the Galápagos Islands.

Darwin did not rush to publicize his idea. He wanted to gather more evidence, and he didn’t want to upset people who believed that God created the world in a single moment, called divine creation. Darwin struggled with his find-ings. He tried to find ways to balance his faith with the scientific evidence he had uncovered.

It took him almost 20 years before he published his theories.

In 1858, another English naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, sent Darwin a letter outlining his own theories, which were similar to Darwin’s. Like Darwin, Wallace had developed his theories from years of research in the field.

Wallace’s letter clearly motivated Darwin to put his own ideas into print. His book, On the Origin of Species, appeared in 1859.

The introduction stated Darwin’s main idea:

More individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive. Consequently, there is a constant struggle for existence. Any being that has an advantage, even a small one, will have a better chance of surviving. Thus it is naturally selected. These individuals that survive will tend to pass down their traits to their offspring.

Darwin presented three kinds of evidence in support of his theory of natural selection. First, fossils showed that species have changed over time. Second, geographical distribution showed that species are descended from local ancestors. Third, he found unexpected similarities between species.

For example, cats, whales, bats and humans all have fingers. The finger bones showed that these species, despite their huge differences, are all related to each other.

Darwin’s book caused huge controversy, but many scientists had accepted his ideas within a decade. Since then, new evidence has clearly supported Darwin’s theories.

Biologists have been able to watch species change in relation to their envi-ronment. Scientists have discovered the structure of DNA and understood how it passes down traits with occasional errors, or mutations. Genetic and fossil evidence have proved that the human species emerged in Africa and is most closely related to chimpanzees.

By the end of the twentieth century, Darwin’s theory of evolution had been supported by a great deal of evidence. Scientists now accepted his theory as fact. His ideas have become the foundation of modern biology.

Darwin did not know the Earth’s age. Educated people in England thought that maybe it was tens of thousands of years old, but Darwin realized that more time than that was needed for species to evolve. He estimated the Earth’s age at about 300,000 years. The Earth was, much later, proven to be 4.56 billion years old. That’s more than enough time for evolution to occur.

Darwin also didn’t understand how variations occurred in reproduction. He knew variations happened and could be magnified. Dog or pigeon breeders did this when they selected animals with the traits they want. They then let these animals reproduce together but not with ones that don’t carry the traits. This results in new breeds of dogs or pigeons. Darwin called his idea “natural selection” to contrast it with artificial selection, or breeding.

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A quiet life of observationDarwin spent most of his life on his farm with his family, writing and study-ing. He liked solitude and routine, and he loved playing with his children. He wrote thousands of letters to people all over the world, asking questions and seeking information.

Darwin continued developing his talent for observing the natural world and recording what he saw. During his life he studied barnacles, bees, orchids, ants, rabbits, pigeons, earthworms, and insect-eating plants.

Darwin’s other famous work was The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). In this book, he argued that humans descended from apes. His critics drew him in cartoons with a monkey’s body. Darwin guessed that this evolution must have occurred in Africa, since that’s where the apes lived, but he did not yet have any concrete evidence for this.

Darwin wrote clearly and memorably. His books sold well and his total earnings on sales came close to $500,000 in modern terms, an impressive sum for science books.

His best-known sentence is this final one at the end of On the Origin of Species:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

An 1871 cartoon lampooning Darwin

1848Karl Marx publishes The Communist Manifesto

1837Inventor Samuel Morse patents his electric telegraph

1827German composer Ludwig van Beethoven dies

1818Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein anonymously

1809Abraham Lincoln born in Hodgenville, Kentucky

During the time of Darwin

1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850

1828-1831Attends Cambridge University

1831-1836Travels aboard the Beagle

1839Elected to the Royal Society of London

1839Marries Emma Wedgwood

1851Death of 10-year-old daughter Anne

1817Darwin’s mother dies when he is 8 years old

1825-1827Attends University

of Edinburgh

1809Born in Shrewsbury,

Shropshire, England on February 12

Timeline of Darwin’s life

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1868Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt is born

1869Dmitri Mendeleev devises the periodic table

1879Thomas Edison tests his first light bulb

1882Dies in Kent, England, on April 19

1876Writes his autobiography, which was published posthumously in 1887

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

1859Publishes On the Origin of Species

1866Gregor Mendel publishes Experiments on Plant Hybridization, becoming the “father of modern genetics”

1861The American Civil War begins

1860 1870 1880

Last days, lasting legacyAll his life, Darwin suffered from stomach problems and heart palpitations. They were never explained. He died in 1882 at the age of 73. He was buried in Westminster Abby in London, not far from the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.

Time has confirmed that Darwin did indeed open a new era in our under-standing of the living world. He showed us how organisms of today are the product of a long process of change, the greatness of evolution itself.

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SourcesBrowne, Janet. Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith. New York: Henry Holt, 2009.

Quammen, David. “Alfred Russel Wallace: The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin.” National Geographic, December 2008. http://ngm.nationalgeographic .com/2008/12/wallace/quammen-text.

Image creditsAn 1881 photograph of Charles Darwin © Bettmann/CORBIS

A painting of the HMS Beagle at Tierra Del Fuego by Conrad Martens, public domain

A caricature of Charles Darwin from 1871 © PoodlesRock/CORBIS

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