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What’s Charles Darwin famous for?
- developing the scientific bombshell, his theory of evolution
- going round the world on HMS Beagle
- being the foremost expert on barnacles (it’s true!)
Charles Darwin remains today the most famous naturalist and biologist whose explanation of the theory of evolution are still discussed today, more than 100 years after he produced them. NowYouKnowAbout Scientists brings your children Darwin’s life story and ideas in an easy DVD format as part of an introduction to great historical figures.
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury in England in 1809. He was the youngest of 5 children in a well-to-do medical family. His father was a highly-regarded doctor with a large and successful practice and his grandfather had also been a doctor before him and a well-regarded writer on natural history.
Darwin’s mother died when he was still a small boy and he was largely brought up by nannies and his older sisters. Unlike the other great names – Galileo, Newton, Pasteur and Marie Curie - in this NowYouKnowAbout Scientists DVD – Darwin hated school and was not at all studious as a boy. His father wanted him to follow in the medical tradition of the family and insisted that he studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh University. But watching operations and dissections made Charles’s stomach turn and he spent little time working. His father, seeing that his son was not cut out for medicine, recalled him to Shrewsbury. There in his study, he suggested another respectable career for a man of his class – the church. Darwin thus went off to Cambridge to study religion with the plan of taking up a position afterwards in a country parish.
While at Cambridge, Darwin ignored his religious studies and instead got to know a botany professor, Reverend John Henslow. He became Darwin’s mentor and had a far-reaching influence on the young man. It was Henslow who arranged for Darwin to be offered the position as naturalist aboard the ship, HMS Beagle and this was the defining period of Darwin’s entire life.
Aboard The Beagle, Darwin shared a cabin with the ship’s captain, Charles Fitzroy who was a religious man with traditional Christian beliefs. Charles was not a natural sailor and was often terribly seasick. The voyage, lasted 5 long years, during which the ship and its crew circumnavigated the globe. Charles saw countries, animals, vegetation and people that few had seen before him and he drew on these experiences to form his theory evolution 20 years later.
The most famous part of this long trip is undoubtedly the time spent in the Galapagos islands. It was here, amongst this tightly-grouped cluster of islands, that Darwin saw the famous finches, the giant tortoises and other species that varied from island to island.
On his return to England, Charles turned his mind immediately to marriage and, being used to careful observation, consideration and making notes, he famously wrote a list which is still relevant today about the pros and cons of marriage. Once he decided it was a good thing, he set about finding a wife and through family relationships, met and married Emma Wedgwood, who was in fact his cousin.
They settled in a Down House, a large family house in Kent which you can still visit today and raised their 10 children although 3 of them were sadly to die before reaching adulthood. Charles was an exemplary father, taking real pleasure in playing with his children, something that men of his class at the time were not accustomed to doing.
It took almost 20 years before Charles Darwin published his celebrated theory, On the Origin of the Species. And why did he publish it? Because after working on this theory for so long, he one day received a package from another naturalist, Alfred Wallace, outlining almost exactly the same theory. Realising that his life’s work would be credited to someone else, he chose to publish, with Wallace’s wholehearted support.
There was a huge outcry when the book appeared, as its ideas shook the Victorian society to its foundations. At that time, nothing had ever contradicted the absolute and literal truth of the Genesis story. Darwin’s ideas made some people begin to look at the world in a different way.
Darwin himself was a shy and retiring man who didn’t court controversy so he stayed quietly at home while the arguments raged. He wrote 14 books and numerous papers on subjects as varied as barnacles, earthworms and the Beagle journey. He had always fought ill health, ever since returning from his long voyage and at the age of 73, he died at Down House, surrounded by family members. They had wanted a small, simple funeral at home but the leading scientists of the day persuaded them that Charles Darwin was worthy of a much greater honour and he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, a few feet away from the tomb of Isaac Newton.
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