Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is “one of the most important people of nineteenth century”. It is difficult to characterize Darwin despite his acknowledged importance. He was as much a cultural product as a shape of culture. He was the man who conducted his own observations and experiments but collected data tirelessly from others. Born in Shrewsbury in 1809 as the fifth of six children born to Dr.Robert Darwin and his wife Susannah Wedgwood, Darwin entered Shrewsbury school for his education. At the age of 16 he was sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine. Darwin was not interested in medicine instead his interest lay elsewhere in gathering stones and insects. Recognizing that he has no interest in being a medical man, he was sent to Christ College, Cambridge University. Charles earned his bachelor’s degree in technology in 1831. He made friends like John Henslow who was both botanist and mineralogist during his tenure as student in Cambridge. It was Henslow who suggested Darwin to Captain Robert Fitz Roy of the HMS Beagle. HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Fitz Roy, sailed from Davenport which was twice been driven back by heavy southwestern gales. The expedition was originally planned to last for two years, but it almost lasted for almost five years. As the naturalist, the purpose of the voyage was to chart the coast of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego and to carry the chain of chronometric readings round the world. He spent most of his time exploring on land.
During the Voyage of Beagle he pursued and published serious studies on such diverse topics as coral reefs, earthworm, barnacles, fertilization in plants and the descent of man. Much of his interest in variation was no doubt stimulated by observations during a four year cruise around the world visiting natural habitats with rich and diverse fauna.
Darwin did not become an evolutionist on the Voyage that turned him in to. In the HMS Beagle, Darwin not only shares his scientific observations but also the views of the people and societies. He visited, from the elegant signorians in the street of Buenos Aires to the pitiful Tekeenicas Indians who lived at sustenance level and worse in wilderness of Tierra del Fuego. During his observation he was not only surprised by the difference between species but also from their similarities. He wrote in his journal of the Galapagos Islands, “ …yet all shows the marked relationship with those of America though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width”. From these findings he proposed ‘Theory of Evolution’ which says that all living things are related and descended from common ancestor. His general theory mainly states that the life developed from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic “descent with modification”.