Charles Darwin: Thinkers of the 19th Century

The story behind the Victorian Englishman who founded biology.

Hot History

Sep 24, 2023

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Birth of a naturalist

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewbury, England on February 12, 1809. His father Robert was a doctor. His mother Susannah was the daughter of the famous pottery industrialist Josiah Wedgwood. Charles’ grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, who was himself a distinguished biologist during the Midlands Enlightenment. Erasmus wrote on a plethora of subjects, but the most notable one was evolutionary biology.

Despite coming from such an illustrious family, Charles’ early life was relatively unremarkable. He attended Shrewsbury School, where he studied Latin and the classics. He was not regarded as particularly intelligent by his father or teachers. Although he appeared to have an ordinary level of intelligence, young Charles demonstrated a unique passion for learning. Rather than take to the typical love of Greek and Latin literature, Charles was instead enchanted by the English Romantic poetry of Wordsworth and Byron. As a teenager, Charles was smitten by the love of science. He and his brother, also named Erasmus, built an amateur chemistry laboratory in their garden shed.

Edinburgh education

In 1825, Charles studied at Edinburgh’s Medical School, but medicine proved not to be his true calling. He found lectures to be dull, and felt sickened by the sight of blood during surgery. One subject he did enjoy was the study of taxidermy, which he learned from an African ex-slave named John Edmonstone.

During his second year in Scotland, Darwin joined a science club called the Plinian Society. Consisting of natural historians, these young intellectuals challenged religious orthodoxy with their evolutionary ideas about the materialistic origins of human begins. Many of these ideas had already been anticipated by Charles’ own grandfather Erasmus.

At university, Darwin met a zoologist named Robert Grant. The two became close friends. Grant was the first person to really cultivate Darwin’s interest in evolutionary theories. Darwin began collecting fossils and meticulously studying animal life.

Much to his father’s dismay, Charles dropped out of Medical School by 1827. He joined his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood II, on a trip to Paris. Having left medical school, Charles was put on the path of becoming a clergyman. His father enrolled him at Christ’s College at Cambridge University.

Cambridge years

Although Darwin had been exposed to evolutionary theory in Edinburgh, he still maintained a creationist worldview at this time. “I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible,” he later recalled. In the summer before his studies, Charles fell in love with a girl named Fanny Owen, the sister of one of his friends. They spent long hours talking, riding horses, and playing cards.

Darwin’s theological studies at Cambridge began toward the end of 1827. Rather than studying the Bible, however, he studied beetles. He attended botany lectures by Reverend John Stevens Henslow. Entranced by the career path of a naturalist, Charles pursued his biological studies with vigor and enthusiasm.

By 1829, it was clear that Charles had no interest in joining the clergy. He spent spring break with Reverend Frederick William Hope, a leading entomologist who studied insects. Darwin spent more time chasing beetles than booty. The obsessive naturalist neglected his romance with Fanny, and the two broke up the following spring. Even though he was uninterested in religious affairs, the brilliant Darwin still managed to pass his theological exams in January of 1831, ranking tenth place in his class.

Having finished his religious education, Charles was ready to become a clergyman, albeit one with an unusual interest in science. However, Henslow encouraged Darwin to travel the world before settling down in the mundane life of a religious cleric.

Darwin decided to travel to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Spain. He planned to travel along with a friend named Marmaduke Ramsay. They intended to study the geological formations of the islands. Before they could set sail, Ramsay died suddenly. Charles was grief-stricken, and chose to abort his travel plans.

A few weeks later, he received a letter from Henslow. Charles was told about an opening on a ship called the HMS Beagle, which was bound for South America.

The Beagle voyage

The Beagle voyage was planned as an ambitious five-year tour to literally map out South America. It was one of several ships given this task. Robert Fitzroy, the captain of the Beagle, knew that the arduous voyage would require that the men be close friends. So he sought out a true scholar-gentleman, whose warm company could break up the monotony of sailing. Charles was the perfect man for the job. But his father was furious, even though Darwin was already a grown man. Robert continued to think that Charles’ fervor for science was nothing more than a fad. Charles’ uncle Josiah had to persuade Robert to finally relent on this issue.

Darwin rushed to London to meet Captain Fitzroy. Luckily for him, the ship still had a spot available. It finally set sail on Tuesday, December 27, 1831. Darwin found himself in a tiny cabin, only nine by eleven feet long. It stood only five feet high. Part of the cabin was blocked by a mast rising through it. From the very beginning, he suffered from seasickness. It lasted all throughout the five years, which was hardly pleasant for our scientific protagonist!

On January 16, 1832, the Beagle stopped at the Cape Verde islands, off the western coast of Africa. There, Darwin discovered some fossil shells 45 feet above sea level. He wondered how the fossils could have risen that high.

After 23 days, the Beagle set out for Brazil, arriving in the port city of Salvador by the end of February of 1832. Throughout the spring, the ship traveled along the Brazilian coast, stopping in many of its ports. At each stop, Darwin went on long-winded hikes, collecting many specimens along the way. Charles carefully catalogued these specimens onboard. Fitzroy and his crew cared little about Darwin’s worthless work. They got annoyed by what they saw as a bunch of junk on the ship. Little did they realize, these were precious scientific discoveries. Every few months or so, Charles arranged for a portion of his specimens to be shipped to Reverend Henslow back in Cambridge. Henslow ensured that the fossils were kept safe.

From Brazil, the Beagle proceeded to sail to Patagonia, a large region of South America in modern-day Argentina. There, Darwin collected more fossils, bits of bone, and feathers. He struggled to properly record their features, and he hoped that more experienced naturalists could decode them back home.

From Patagonia, the ship went further south toward Tierra del Fuego. Darwin encountered indigenous people living the jungles. He and his European crew mates regarded such people as savages.

By March of 1833, the crew of the Beagle began mapping out the Falkland Islands, which the British had seized from Argentina just months earlier. Fascinated by the bird and animal fossils he found there, Darwin spent time comparing the specimens of everything he had collected over the voyage. His work had become so exhaustive, that he had to hire a secretary named Syms Covington. Charles’ letters back to Henslow were regularly read aloud at the Philosophical Society of Cambridge. By this point, Charles Darwin had already gained the reputation as one of England’s most adept naturalists and observers. On Darwin’s 25th birthday, Captain Fitzroy named Terra del Fuego’s largest mountain in Charles’ honor. Today, it is still known as Mount Darwin.

By April of 1834, the ship had sailed around Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America. The Beagle crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Over the summer, Darwin fell seriously ill. Deemed too sick to continue the voyage, he spent four months languishing in Tierra. Modern historians think it was probably a form of Chagas disease. Darwin resumed his voyage à la Beagle by November of 1834.

The ship rounded Cape Horn, sailing up the western coast of South America. On February 20, 1835, the region was struck by a massive earthquake. Entering the port of Concepción in Chile, Darwin witnessed the damage. He saw that the rocks around the harbor had been lifted almost a meter by the quake. Shellfish and seaweed, which were normally near the water, were left high and dry. For Darwin, it was a eureka moment. He realized that natural disasters like earthquakes might play a role in the speciation and diversification of Earth’s lifeforms.

Darwin’s finches

The Beagle departed from South America, setting sail across the Pacific. Almost 1,000 kilometers from the mainland, it anchored at a group of 13 small rocky islands along the Equator. These were the famous Galápagos Islands.

Darwin was immediately struck by the strangeness of the birds, reptiles, and other animals that he encountered. But he also noticed that, despite their bizarreness, they bore fundamental similarities to the animals found along South America’s mainland. Stranger still, each island had its own kinds of animals. One example were giant tortoises, which weighed over 200 kilograms. Local islanders were able to tell which island a tortoise came from solely from the shape of its shell.

One of the most demonstrative examples of this phenomenon was the famous finches. Finches were a group of birds. Most were small and brown. But each species had a slightly different size and shape of the beak, allowing it to eat certain kinds of foods. “One might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in the archipelago one species had been taken and modified for different ends,” Darwin observed. Today, this phenomenon is called speciation.

The Beagle continued to sail across the Pacific into Tahiti. Darwin was enthralled by this experience. He gazed upon the tropical plants and colorful animals with an almost trance-like, aesthetic admiration. He was fascinated by the simple, natural lifestyle of the local people.

The ship continued onward toward New Zealand, and then Australia. Darwin was appalled by the abject condition of those islanders, who had been enslaved by the colonial powers of Europe. He observed that humans, like other animals, were in a bitter struggle for survival, which often favored the strong in an unguided, amoral way.

Marriage to Emma

The Beagle finally returned home to Falmouth, England on October 2, 1836. For the next few years, Darwin meticulously organized and catalogued his enormous collection of plants, animals, rocks, and fossils.

By the summer of 1838, Darwin shared his radical ideas with his father. Over several months, Charles kindled a romance with his female cousin named Emma Wedgwood. Remember, marrying cousins was still common at the time. Emma came from a strict religious family. Charles knew that the in-laws would regard his theories as heresy. Deeply in love, he ignored his father’s cautions and refused to break off the romance. Charles spoke candidly about his thoughts regarding religion and nature, and Emma took them quite open-mindedly. Darwin kept himself busy with various tasks. He took to writing. He continued to study his fossil finds. He spent time watching apes and orangutans at the London Zoo.

Charles proposed to Emma on November 11, 1838. It was well-received by both sides of the family. Arrangements were made for Darwin to receive an annual sum of money from his father. These generous donations allowed Darwin and his newly-wed wife to live comfortably. Darwin and his wife Emma got married on January 29, 1839. The couple settled in a home in London, which was quickly filled by Darwin’s scientific endeavors. Around this time, Darwin hired a new secretary named Joseph Parslow.

Natural selection

Throughout the spring of 1839, Darwin conducted research on cross-breeding. He asked various experts, such as farmers, about how they cross-bred animals. He filled page after page with his correspondences. In May, the multi-volume collection he wrote alongside Captain Fitzroy, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of HMS Beagle, was released to the public. It became an instant bestseller.

Now a respected scientist, author, and member of the prestigious Royal Society, Darwin continued his research and writing going into the 1840s and 1850s. In 1842, he wrote a work on geology called The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. Two more geology books followed over the next few years.

Over time, Darwin’s heath began to wane. He was only able to write for a few hours each day. This might have been after-effects from his tropical sicknesses from his five-year voyage. Despite poor health, Darwin continued his research into the idea of evolution. He became increasingly convinced that biological species were not fixed and immutable, as was commonly believed in Europe. He wrote a small pamphlet in 1842, but he decided to do more research before publishing his ground-breaking theories. Evidence continued to mount in favor of Darwin’s theory.

For many years, Darwin was reluctant to publish his theory of evolution by natural selection. He knew that his naturalistic accounts of biology would ruffle some religious feathers. At the time, most people in Europe, including many well-respected scientists, were creationists. They believed in the literal truth of the Bible. For the time, Darwin decided to bite his tongue.

Darwin received a letter at his home in Kent in June of 1885. It came from Malaysia. It came from another esteemed English naturalist, Alfred Wallace. Wallace knew of Darwin’s interest in evolution. In the letter, he wrote down a summary of evolutionary theory. Darwin stood dumbfounded. All of the work he had meticulously done over the past 20 years now made sense. It was neatly described by Wallace’s letter. At a scientific meeting at the Linnean Society in London, the works of Wallace and Darwin were read aloud in July of 1858. Wallace agreed that, because Darwin had compiled most of the evidence in favor of evolution, Charles would receive the public credit as evolution’s founder.

Origin of Species

On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published his masterpiece: On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s publisher, John Murray, realized that the book would be enormously controversial. So he printed a mere 1,250 copies. It was an immediate smash hit, all selling out at once. A second edition was rapidly put together and produced.

Darwin’s theory of evolution had seismic social effects. As with most scientific breakthroughs made by Western civilization, it was vociferously denounced by the Christian Churches. This was not without reason; Darwin’s ideas did in fact invalidate the Bible’s theory of origins. The literal truth of the Bible was rendered asunder by Darwin’s scientific discoveries. The quiet, inoffensive Darwin was excoriated in outlandish terms by his supposedly charitable Christian detractors. Even members of Darwin’s own family were outraged by his unapologetic contradiction of Scripture. He was described by one clergyman as “the most dangerous man in England.”

But not all religious people opposed Darwin’s theory, and a great number accepted it as solid science. These thinkers saw no contradiction between a providential Creator and the natural laws which enabled such a creative, evolutionary process. “There is a grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin himself wrote in the conclusion of Origin, “…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Thomas Huxley, a fellow biologist, spoke out in Darwin’s favor in England. In the United States, Darwin was strongly supported by Harvard botanist Asa Gray. Darwin himself stayed behind in Kent, and did not participate much in the vibrant public debate surrounding his earth-shattering ideas.

Darwin began Origin of Species by looking at artificial selection of pigeons, horses, and garden flowers. The English naturalist observed how many people throughout history have tacitly understood the way that animals and plants change over generations. Slight differences over time accumulate into species-defining characteristics. The traits which make an organism more likely to survive are more likely to get passed down. This, in essence, is natural selection. Later chapters of Origin deal with animal instincts, fossils, and the geographical distribution of Earth’s diverse lifeforms. Anticipating backlash from religion, Darwin intentionally omitted any claims about human evolution. But the implications were unmistakable.

Descent of Man

Following the publication of Origin, Darwin continued to do research. He followed it up with 1871’s Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. It was here that Darwin explicitly asserted that humans were evolved; they were not poofed into existence, as Genesis claimed.

Darwin’s ideas had implications far beyond biology. “In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches,” he opined in Origin of Species. “Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” Evolutionism meant that human ancestry dated far back into prehistory, long before the existence of written records. This opened up the field of anthropology.

Darwin’s health improved, which made a comeback in the 1870s. Darwin’s Descent of Man was another huge success. He spent much of his time writing revisions of it, along with Origin. He completed Descent’s second edition in April of 1874. This was the last time the man wrote about evolution. In between his bouts of illness, Darwin continued to refine his works. A decade after its first publication, Origin was printed in its fifth edition. The sixth edition, which appeared in 1871, used the word “evolution” for the first time. In 1877, he received a special degree from Cambridge University. He continued to write prolifically about a range of biological subjects, including insect-eating plants and soil enrichment.

Death and legacy

After a mild heart attack in December of 1881, Darwin died peacefully at Down House, his home for nearly half a century. He was aged 75. By this time, the initial controversy surrounding Darwin’s ideas had died off. He received a honored burial at the great Westminster Abbey in London, next to Isaac Newton himself. Darwin’s funeral was attended by politicians, inventors, explorers, scientists, and artists alike.

Darwin left this Earth as one of England’s most beloved national figures. Today, he is warmly remembered as one of the most influential scientists in human history.

But Darwin’s legacy is not entirely without some opposition, mostly from religion. In the United States, Darwin is frequently studied in the context of the evolution-creationist controversy. Teaching evolution in school was the subject of the infamous Scopes Trial in 1925. Acceptance of evolutionary biology continues to be a line of demarcation between religious moderates and Bible-thumping fundamentalists. Some of Darwin’s religious opponents have attempted to “baptize” him using a fabricated deathbed conversion story. The Lady Hope Story, first published in 1915, claimed that Darwin converted to Christianity on his deathbed. This in spite of the fact that Darwin explicitly condemned Christianity as a “damnable doctrine” in his 1887 autobiography. The story was disputed by Darwin’s own kids, and is considered false by most modern historians. While his name continues to be cursed and reviled by creationists—many of whom associate him with the literal Devil—Darwin remains a cause célèbre for American secularists who oppose the corrosive influence of religious dogma on public life.