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CHARLES
DARWIN
BIOGRAPHY
790L
CHARLES
DARWIN
NATURALIST & AUTHOR
Born
February 12, 1809
Shrewsbury, England
Died
April 19, 1882
Downe, England
By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela
Before the 1800s, scholars
generally assumed that
living organisms remained
as they were created, never
changing. Charles Darwin
shattered this idea by
presenting evidence that
species do change over
time. He called the process
that species go through
“natural selection.”
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Setting out to sea
Charles Robert Darwin was born the same day as Abraham Lincoln in 1809.
Both of these men helped reshape the way we look at the human race.
Darwin was the fifth of six children. His father was a doctor and businessman. His mother came from a wealthy family. She died when Darwin
was 8, and his older sisters raised him. His family was Unitarian (a Christian
sect) and abolitionist (anti-slavery). Both of these were uncommon in that
time. Darwin considered himself a religious man.
Darwin’s father pushed him toward medicine or religious studies, but Darwin
had other ideas. His heart was set on becoming a naturalist. He went
to university in Scotland, and finished at Cambridge University in England.
When he was 22, Darwin joined a ship going on a voyage to South America.
It was only supposed to sail for two years. However, the trip on the HMS
Beagle ended up lasting almost five years and going around the world. It
gave Darwin the opportunity to observe natural life in many different places.
Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands, 14 unique islands about 600 miles off
the coast of Ecuador in western South America. He found animals and birds
slightly different from each other on each island. Darwin collected many
samples to take back to England.
Famously, he brought back different finches. A finch is a small bird. Darwin
showed his finches to bird experts, called ornithologists, in England. They
told him that he had about a dozen species of finches. No one had ever seen
them anywhere else.
Darwin examined the birds’ beaks. He noticed that each bird’s beak had
adapted to the type of seeds available on its island. The need for food had
caused the shape of each beak to develop over time.
Darwin wrote reports about his trip. Soon he was elected to the famous
Royal Society of London. It is a group of famous scientists. Shortly after,
Darwin married a cousin of his, Emma Wedgwood. They had 10 children.
Two died as infants and one died at age 10. Emma and Charles were very
happy together. Near the end of his life, he told his children that she had
been his greatest blessing.
Darwin’s key idea
Darwin was only 30, but he had already developed his key idea: small
changes occur when creatures reproduce. Some creatures are helped by
these changes. The creatures that benefit from the changes are more
likely to reproduce and pass on those characteristics to their offspring.
Over time, these changes can result in new species. This was just what
he believed had happened on the Galápagos Islands.
Painting of the HMS Beagle at Tierra Del Fuego, by Conrad Martens
Darwin did not rush to publish his idea. He wanted to gather more evidence.
He didn’t want to upset people who believed that God had created the world in
a single moment. Darwin struggled with his findings. He tried to find a way
to balance his religious beliefs with the scientific evidence he had uncovered.
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It took him almost 20 years before he published his theories.
In 1858, another English naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, sent Darwin a
letter outlining his own theories. Wallace had come up with ideas similar to
Darwin’s. Like Darwin, Wallace had developed his theories from years of
research out in nature.
Wallace’s letter clearly motivated Darwin to put his own ideas into print.
His book, On the Origin of Species, appeared in 1859.
By the end of the twentieth century, Darwin’s theory of evolution had plenty
of evidence supporting it. His theory was now accepted as fact. Darwin’s
ideas became the foundation of modern biology.
Darwin did not know the Earth’s age. Educated people in England thought
that maybe it was tens of thousands of years old. Darwin realized that it must
be older. More time would have been needed for species to evolve. He
estimated the Earth’s age at about 300,000 years. Much later, the Earth was
proven to be 4.56 billion years old. That’s more than enough time for evolution to occur.
The introduction stated Darwin’s main idea:
More individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive.
Consequently, there is a constant struggle for existence. Any being
that has an advantage, even a small one, will have a better chance of
surviving. Thus it is naturally selected. These individuals that survive
will tend to pass down their traits to their offspring.
Darwin presented three kinds of evidence in support of his theory of natural
selection. First, fossils showed that species have changed over time. Second,
species are descended from local ancestors. Third, he found unexpected
similarities between species. For example, cats, whales, bats, and humans
are very different animals. Yet, they all have fingers. The finger bones
showed that these species are all related to each other.
Darwin’s book caused a huge controversy. Still, within 10 years, many
scientists accepted his ideas. New evidence since then has clearly supported
Darwin’s theories.
Biologists have been able to watch species change in relation to their environment. Scientists have discovered the structure of DNA. They now understood how it passes down traits through generations. Occasionally errors,
called mutations, get passed down as well. Genetic and fossil evidence
has proved that the human species emerged in Africa. Scientists now believe
we evolved from chimpanzees.
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Darwin also didn’t understand how changes occurred in reproduction.
He knew changes happened and could be magnified. Dog breeders did this
when they selected animals with the traits they wanted. They let animals
with traits they liked reproduce together. They didn’t let them reproduce with
ones that didn’t carry the traits. Over time this led to new breeds of dogs.
It was called artificial selection, or breeding. Darwin called his idea “natural
selection” to contrast it with this planned evolution.
A quiet life of observation
Darwin spent most of his life on his farm with his family, writing and studying. Darwin wrote thousands of letters to people all over the world. He was
always asking questions and seeking information.
Darwin continued observing the natural world and recording what he saw.
During his life he studied bees, orchids, ants, rabbits, pigeons, earthworms,
and insect-eating plants.
Darwin’s other famous work was The Descent of Man, and Selection in
Relation to Sex (1871). In this book, he argued that humans descended from
apes. His critics drew him in cartoons with a monkey’s body. Darwin
guessed that this evolution must have occurred in Africa, since that’s where
the apes lived. But Darwin never had any solid evidence for this.
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Darwin wrote well and his books sold well. His total earnings on sales came
close to $500,000 in modern terms, an impressive sum for science books.
His best-known sentence is this final one at the end of On the Origin of
Species:
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.
Last days, lasting legacy
All his life, Darwin suffered from stomach problems and heart palpitations.
They were never explained. He died in 1882 at the age of 73. He was buried
in Westminster Abby in London, not far from the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.
Time has confirmed that Darwin opened a new era in our understanding
of the living world. He showed us how organisms of today are the product
of a long process of change, the greatness of evolution itself.
An 1871 cartoon lampooning Darwin
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Timeline of Darwin’s life
1828-1831
Attends Cambridge University
1817
Darwin’s mother dies when
he is 8 years old
1831-1836
Travels aboard the Beagle
1839
Elected to the Royal
Society of London
1809
Born in Shrewsbury,
Shropshire, England on
February 12
1800
1839
Marries Emma Wedgwood
1825-1827
Attends University
of Edinburgh
1810
1820
1809
Abraham Lincoln
born in Hodgenville,
Kentucky
1827
German composer
Ludwig van
Beethoven dies
1818
Mary Shelley publishes
Frankenstein anonymously
During the time of Darwin
1830
1840
1851
Death of
10-year-old
daughter Anne
1850
1848
Karl Marx publishes
The Communist Manifesto
1837
Inventor Samuel Morse patents his electric telegraph
Sources
Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2002.
1871
Publishes The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex
Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995.
Heiligman, Deborah. Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith.
New York: Henry Holt, 2009.
1859
Publishes On the
Origin of Species
1876
Writes his autobiography,
which was published
posthumously in 1887
Quammen, David. “Alfred Russel Wallace: The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin.”
National Geographic, December 2008. http://ngm.nationalgeographic
.com/2008/12/wallace/quammen-text.
1882
Dies in Kent,
England,
on April 19
1860
1870
1880
1879
Thomas Edison tests
his first light bulb
1869
Dmitri Mendeleev devises the periodic table
1868
Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt is born
1866
Gregor Mendel publishes Experiments on Plant Hybridization,
becoming the “father of modern genetics”
1861
The American Civil War begins
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Image credits
An 1881 photograph of Charles Darwin
© Bettmann/CORBIS
A painting of the HMS Beagle at Tierra Del Fuego
by Conrad Martens, public domain
A caricature of Charles Darwin from 1871
© PoodlesRock/CORBIS
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