Darwin

Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on 12 February 1809. In 1827 he started theology studies at Christ's College, Cambridge. His love to collect plants, insects, and geological specimens was noted by his botany professor John Stevens Henslow. He arranged for his talented student a place a on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to Patagonia. Despite the objections of his father, Darwin decided to leave his familiar surroundings.

The voyage took five years from 1831 to 1836. Darwin returned with observations he had made in Teneriffe, the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and elsewhere. During the voyage he had contracted a tropical illness, which made him a semi-invalid for the rest of his life. By 1846 Darwin had published several works based on the discoveries of the voyage and he became secretary of the Geological Society.

From 1842 Darwin lived at Down House, Downe. In 1839 he had married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. In the 1840s Darwin worked on his observations of the origin of species for his own use. He began to conclude that species might share a common ancestor.

Darwin's great work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was heavily dissaproved because it did not support the depiction of creation given in the book of Genesis. Darwin's argument that natural selection worked automatically, leaving little or no room for divine guidance or design. All species, he reasoned, produce far too many offspring for them all to survive, and therefore those with favorable variations - owing to chance - are selected.

At Darwin's hands evolution matured into a well-developed scientific theory, which have been a constant target of religious or scientific attacks. However, Darwin himself did not at first apply the evolutionary theory to human beings. He knew that his challenge to the Biblical doctrine would cause stress to his friends and family, among them his religious wife.

Darwin died in Down, Kent, on April 19, 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.