Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) was an English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. Born in Shrewsbury, he studied medicine at Edinburgh and graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge, before joining HMS Beagle in 1831 as a self-financed gentleman companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy. Five years of surveying and collecting — South America, the Galápagos, the Pacific — made him famous as a geologist and collector; privately, from July 1837, he filled notebooks with 'transmutation' of species, finding his mechanism after reading Malthus in September 1838. Married to his cousin Emma Wedgwood from 1839, he settled at Down House in Kent in 1842, published his Beagle journal and worked for eight years on barnacles, then began the 'big book' on Natural Selection. The shock of Alfred Russel Wallace's 1858 essay forced a joint announcement at the Linnean Society, followed in November 1859 by On the Origin of Species — 1,250 copies, sold out on the day, and an argument that split Victorian opinion. The Descent of Man (1871), plant books, and a final study of earthworms followed. He died at Down on 19 April 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Newton. Fellow of the Royal Society (1839), Royal Medal (1853) and Copley Medal (1864).