Darwin, Charles (1809–82)

The naturalist and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809. A polymath, Darwin was also educated in theology, chemistry, medicine, and geology. Extensive field research, comparative study and reflection on the writings of other natural scientists led him to infer that natural selection explained how species differentiated from one another, including species whose only trace was found in ancient fossil records.

During 1831–36, Darwin sailed along the coast of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America in the British naval vessel HMS Beagle. Periodically, Darwin went ashore for weeks and months at a time. During those five years, his analytic methods consisted almost entirely of making extensive observations, recording his findings systematically, and making comparative and inductive generalizations. During that period, Darwin spent a crucial three months doing field research on the isolated Galapagos Islands where species varied astonishingly from one island to another.

Darwin first thought of natural selection as early as 1838. More than 20 years later, the first edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859. This underwent six editions. As Darwin concisely summarized his theory of evolution through natural selection in the final edition, “Species have been modified through a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations.” Darwin acknowledged intellectual debts to 20 others who had written about evolution, including Erasmus Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Charles Lyell, and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Darwin died in Downe, England, in 1882. As a result of a petition in Parliament, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Subsequent discoveries have validated and elaborated many of Darwin's claims. Others used Darwin's work to support political arguments that he might have rejected. For example, Social Darwinism crudely asserted racist claims that the predominance of the strongest nations over weaker societies justified imperialists’ right to rule over vast colonies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific.

Despite corroborating evidence, Darwin's theory of gradual, incremental change over millions of years has been contentious. Controversially, humans are part of nature—not separate from it. In reaction, opponents of Darwin on state and local U.S. public school boards have attempted to relegate Darwin's theory of evolution in the curriculum to a theory competing with theological explanations like creationism or intelligent design.