Charles Darwin is well known
to the world for his theory of natural selection, which showed that animals
evolved over thousands of years and species changed to adapt to their
environment. Darwin’s insight happened because of what Charles saw on
the Galapagos Islands. He kept his theory to himself most of his life because it
disagreed with peoples’ religious views about creation.
Darwin was born February 12th
1809 in Shrewsbury, England. He was the
fifth of six children. He grew up in a very wealthy family due to his Dad being
a doctor as well as a financier. When Charles was eight years old he started
taking a great interest in history. He
also started collecting all sorts of insects.
Later in the year, his mother died.
After a few years of boarding school, his Dad, Robert Darwin, convinced
him to go to medical school. Charles found the lectures very boring. He couldn’t stand the sight of blood and fled
during a surgical amputation he observed being performed on a child.
Charles dropped out of
medical school and his disappointed and angry father, sent him off to Cambridge
College for a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After being at Cambridge for a few months and not finding any real
passion, his cousin introduced him to collecting beetles. Soon, he started collecting beetles and he
became good friends with John Henslow, who was an important biologist in the
community.
When Darwin came home on
August 29th he received a letter from Henslow proposing a place for
him aboard the HMS Beagle with ship captain Robert Fitzroy. The ship would
chart the South American coastline and the trip was estimated to take two
years. His father, however, did not want
him to go on the expedition. He said it would be a big waste of time. After lots of debate, Charles’ Uncle Josiah
Wedgewood ended up convincing Robert to let Charles go on the trip and also
agreed to fund his participation.
The voyage began on December
27th 1831 and ended up lasting almost five years. During the voyage Darwin took lots of notes on
his observations of all the specimens he was collecting such as, spiders,
butterflies, birds and seashells. The
Beagle sailed all the way around South America stopping every few hundred miles
at locations such as Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Falkland Islands,
Valparaiso and Callao Lima and finally the Galapagos Islands.
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| Map of South America |
When Darwin got to Galapagos
he was shocked to find that all the wildlife such as Marine Iguanas, Penguins,
Sea lions and Giant Tortoises on the islands were completely different species
from what he’d seen in South America. He
found the Galapagos Islands to be very unpleasant because of the volcanoes and
the island’s rocky environment. When Charles returned home he wrote a book
called Voyage of the Beagle recounting what happened and also what he had
collected over the trip. After his book got published he married Emma Wedgewood,
his first cousin.
Charles and Emma were very
happy together. Charles spent many years
raising a family of 9 kids although three of his children died of unknown
illness. He concentrated on studying
barnacles and increasing the size of his beetle collection. In 1859, Darwin’s mentors, Charles Lyell and
Steven Henslow, encouraged him to publish his book, Origin Of Species, describing his Theory of Evolution. They
were afraid that someone else would get credit for the idea if Darwin did not
publish his book. Darwin had been
thinking about the idea for 22 years but was fearful his theory would offend people.
Emma was very religious so Darwin understood on a deep level how his ideas contradicted religious views about creation.
Emma was very religious so Darwin understood on a deep level how his ideas contradicted religious views about creation.
