Download TIMELINE of DARWIN

TIMELINE of DARWIN
In 1859, Charles Darwin changed the world forewer
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling
on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
Charles R. Darwin (On The Origin Of Species, 1859)
EMIL A. ZAFIROV
Charles Robert Darwin was born in
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12
February 1809 at his family home, the Mount.
He established that all species of life
have descended over time from
common ancestry, and proposed the
scientific theory that this branching
pattern of evolution resulted from a
process that he called natural
selection.
He published his theory with compelling evidence
for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of
Species.
Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying
theory of the life sciences, explaining the
diversity of life.
The voyage of the Beagle
Beginning on 27 December 1831,
the voyage
lasted almost five years and, as FitzRoy
had intended, Darwin spent most of that
time on land investigating geology and
making natural history collections, while
the Beagle surveyed and charted coasts.
His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle
established him as an eminent
geologist whose observations and
theories supported Charles Lyell's
uniformitarian ideas, and publication
of his journal of the voyage made him
famous as a popular author.
As HMS Beagle surveyed the coasts
of South America, Darwin theorised
about geology and extinction of
giant mammals.
Puzzled by the geographical
distribution of wildlife and fossils
he collected on the voyage,
Darwin began detailed
investigations and in 1838
conceived his theory of natural
selection.
In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B"
notebook on Transmutation of Species, and
on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first
evolutionary tree.
This is an extract from Darwin's On the Origin
of Species, in which he invoked the idea of
the 'tree of life', a way to describe the
evolutionary relationships between all living
things on Earth.
"The affinities of all the beings of the
same class have sometimes been
represented by a great tree...As buds
give rise by growth to fresh buds, and
these, if vigorous, branch out and
overtop on all sides many a feebler
branch, so by generation I believe it
has been with the great Tree of Life,
which fills with its dead and broken
branches the crust of the earth, and
covers the surface with its ever
branching and beautiful ramifications."
By mid-March, Darwin was
speculating in his Red Notebook on
the possibility that "one species does
change into another"
His theory is simply stated in the introduction:
“As many more individuals of each species
are born than can possibly survive; and as,
consequently, there is a frequently recurring
struggle for existence, it follows that any
being, if it vary however slightly in any
manner profitable to itself, under the
complex and sometimes varying conditions
of life, will have a better chance of surviving,
and thus be naturally selected. From the
strong principle of inheritance, any selected
variety will tend to propagate its new and
modified form.”
He put a strong case for common descent, but
avoided the then controversial term "evolution",
and at the end of the book concluded that:
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
several powers, having been originally
breathed into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being,
evolved.”
In 1871, he examined human evolution
and sexual selection in The Descent of
Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,
followed by The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals. His
research on plants was published in a
series of books, and in his final book,
he examined earthworms and their
effect on soil.
Darwin has been described as one of the
most influential figures in human history.
The theory of evolution by natural
selection, and with it the concept of the
evolutionary Tree of Life, have since been
thoroughly tested and verified by a wide
range of evidence and especially by the
discoveries of genetics. The universality of
the genetic code - the DNA instructions
that specify the make-up of the proteins
from which organisms' bodies are built confirms a common ancestry for all life on
Earth today.