Darwin, Charles Robert

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-82), scientist, b. Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

As a boy, Charles Darwin collected rocks, shells and beetles and, when he left Cambridge University, he obtained a job as a naturalist in the ship HMS Beagle.

The ship was to make a voyage of scientific discovery in the South Seas lasting five years. It took Darwin to islands in the Atlantic and the Pacific and South America, Australia and New Zealand.

In each place he studied the plants and living creatures and he returned with packing-cases of specimens: dried plants, pickled fishes and snakes, stuffed birds, rocks, shells and animal skins.

His studies had planted an idea in his mind and he thought about this idea for twenty years and tried to work it out. Finally, in 1859, he published The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The idea he put forward in his book caused a sensation. It was that living creatures changed naturally in order to fit into the kind of place they lived in. In other words, a species of animal would develop and change as time went by.

At first many people would not accept this idea. They thought the Bible said that God made every living creature in the form in which it exists today.

Some people said Darwin was suggesting that men were descended from apes and they burned his book.

The idea behind Darwin's book is known as the theory of evolution and nearly everyone accepts this as the most plausible theory to date.

Darwin is regarded as one of the greatest scientific thinkers of all time.