biography
| name: |
Darwin, Charles (Robert)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1809–82)
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| biography:
| Naturalist, the discoverer of natural selection, born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, WC England, UK. He studied medicine at Edinburgh (1825), then biology at Cambridge (1828). In 1831 he became the naturalist on HMS Beagle, which was to make a scientific survey of South American waters, and returned in 1836, having travelled extensively throughout the S Pacific. By 1846 he had published several works on his geological and zoological discoveries, and become one of the leading scientists of his day. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood (1808–96). From 1842 he spent his time at Downe, Kent, working in his garden and breeding pigeons and fowls, and here he devoted himself to his major work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). An epoch-making work, it was given a mixed reaction throughout Europe, but in the end received widespread recognition. He then worked on a series of supplemental treatises, including The Descent of Man (1871), which postulated the descent of the human race from the anthropoid group. He wrote many other works on plants and animals, but is remembered primarily as the leader in the field of evolutionary biology. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. |
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