Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin 1809-82, English naturalist, b. Shrewsbury; grandson of Erasmus Darwin and of Josiah Wedgwood . He firmly established the theory of organic evolution known as Darwinism . He studied medicine at Edinburgh and for the ministry at Cambridge but lost interest in both professions during the training. His interest in natural history led to his friendship with the botanist J. S. Henslow ; through him came the opportunity to make a five-year cruise (1831-36) as official naturalist aboard the Beagle. This started Darwin on a career of accumulating and assimilating data that resulted in the formulation of his concept of evolution and his explication of natural and sexual selection . He spent the remainder of his life carefully and methodically working over the information from his copious notes and from every other available source.

Independently, the naturalist A. R. Wallace had worked out a concept of evolution similar to Darwin's. Wallace sent a paper outlining his theory to Darwin in 1858, and its striking coincidences with Darwin's work led Darwin's friends to move to assure that the more cautious Darwin, who had been slow to publish, would receive credit for the independence and priority of his ideas. The next year Darwin set forth the structure of his theory and massive support for it in the superbly organized On the Origin of Species, supplemented and elaborated in his many later books, notably The Descent of Man (1871). He also formulated a theory of the origin of coral reefs.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (ed. by N. Barlow, 1958) and Life and Letters (ed. by F. Darwin, 1887; repr. with intro. by G. G. Simpson, 1962); letters of Darwin and Henslow, ed. by N. Barlow (1967); The Corespondence of Charles Darwin ed. by F. Burkhardt et al. (10 vol., 1987-97); J. Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner (rev. ed. 1958); G. Wichler, Charles Darwin: The Founder of the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection (tr. 1961); A. Moorehead, Darwin and the Beagle (1969, rev. ed. 1979); P. Appleman, ed., Darwin (1970, repr. 1983); D. L Hull, Darwin and His Critics (1983); R. J. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (1989); R. Dawkins, River Out of Eden (1995); D. C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995); N. Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin (1995); S. Jones, Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated (2000); J. Browne, Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995) and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2002).

Darwin, Charles (Robert) (1809–82), educated at Edinburgh University and Christ's College, Cambridge. He embarked in 1831 with Fitzroy as naturalist on the Beagle, bound for South America, returned in 1836, and published Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle (1839). His great work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection appeared in 1859. Darwin had received from A. R. Wallace a manuscript containing a sketch of his theory. Building upon the Uniformitarian geology of Charles Lyell (1797–1875), which supposed a very great antiquity for the earth and slow, regular change, Darwin argued for a natural, not divine, origin of species. In the competitive struggle for existence, creatures possessing advantageous mutations would be favoured, eventually evolving into new species. In the ‘survival of the fittest’ (a phrase coined by H. Spencer, but accepted by Darwin) organic descent was achieved by natural selection, by analogy with the artificial selection of the stock-breeder. An agnostic, Darwin saw no higher moral or religious ends in evolution. Darwin's book gave rise to intense opposition, but found distinguished supporters in T. H. Huxley, Lyell, and Sir Joseph Hooker (1817–1911); the reverberation of his ideas can be seen throughout the literature of the second half of the 19th cent. In The Descent of Man (1871) Darwin discussed sexual selection, and argued that man too had evolved, from the higher primates. A dedicated naturalist, Darwin also wrote extensively on barnacles, earthworms, and orchids, and was a pioneer observer of animal behaviour. The Life and Letters of Darwin, edited by his son Francis Darwin, appeared 1887–8.