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Charles Darwin was a Victorian 'gentleman scientist' who is best known for his contributions to evolutionary biology.

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809. He was the fifth of six children born to the wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side. In July of 1817, when Charles was eight years old, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire. In the autumn he went with Erasmus to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to study medicine, but he neglected his medical studies, from both boredom and a dislike of surgery. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who told him exciting tales of the South American rainforest. This experience gave him evidence that "Negroes and Europeans" were closely related despite superficial differences in appearance.

In Darwin's second year at Edinburgh University he joined the Plinian Society, a student group of natural history enthusiasts, and assisted Dr. Robert Edmund Grant in his investigations into the anatomy and life cycles of marine animals in the Firth of Forth. In March 1827 Darwin made a presentation to the Plinian Society about his own discovery that the black spores often found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. Darwin was clearly influenced by Grant, who expounded Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution by acquired characteristics, and by the evolutionary ideas of Charles's grandfather Erasmus. Grant found evidence for homology, the radical theory that all animals have similar organs which differ only in complexity, thus showing common descent.

In 1827, Darwin's father, unhappy at his younger son's lack of progress, enrolled him at Christ's College, Cambridge to read theology. Along with his cousin William Darwin Fox, he became engrossed in a popular craze, the competitive collecting of beetles. Fox introduced him to the Reverend John Stevens Henslow, professor of botany, for expert advice on beetles. Darwin joined Henslow's natural history course and became known to his teachers as "the man who walks with Henslow" because of their frequent outings to search for new specimens. In his final exams in January 1831, Darwin performed well in theology and, having scraped through in classics, mathematics and physics, came in tenth in the year group.

Inspired by Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative, he planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. To prepare himself, Darwin joined the geology course of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick and, in the summer of 1831, went with him to assist in mapping strata in Wales. After a fortnight with student friends at Barmouth, he returned home to find a letter from Henslow recommending Darwin as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for the unpaid position of gentleman's companion to Robert FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle, which was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son's participation.

While Darwin was still on the voyage, Henslow promoted his former pupil's reputation by giving selected naturalists access to Darwin's fossil specimens and to Darwin's geological letters. When the HMS Beagle returned on 2 October 1836, Darwin was a celebrity in scientific circles. After visiting his home in Shrewsbury and seeing relatives, Darwin hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding naturalists to describe and catalogue the collections and agreed to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to be a self-funded gentleman scientist, and an excited Darwin went round the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe his collections. Zoologists had a huge backlog of work, and there was a danger of specimens just being left in storage.

In mid-December 1836 Darwin moved to Cambridge to organise work on his collections and rewrite his Journal. He wrote his first paper, showing that the South American landmass was slowly rising, and, with Lyell's enthusiastic backing, read it to the Geological Society of London on 4 January 1837. On the same day, he presented his mammal and bird specimens to the Zoological Society. On 17 February 1837, Darwin was elected to the Council of the Geographical Society. In his presidential address, the geologist Charles Lyell presented Owen's findings on Darwin's fossils, stressing geographical continuity of species as supporting his uniformitarian ideas.

On 11 November 1839, Darwin made a proposal of marriage to his cousin Emma Wedgewood. The marriage was arranged for 24 January 1839, but the Wedgwoods set the date back and instead, on January 24th, Darwin was honoured by being elected as Fellow of the Royal Society. On 29 January 1839, Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at her home in Maer and immediately caught the train to London and their new home.

The Darwins had ten children: two died in infancy, and their eldest daughter Annie died at the age of ten. Annie's death had a devastating effect on her parents. Charles was a devoted father and is considered uncommonly attentive to his children for his era. Whenever they fell ill he feared that they might have inherited weaknesses resulting from inbreeding due to the close family ties he shared with his wife. He examined this topic in his writings, contrasting it with the advantages of crossing amongst many organisms. Despite his fears, however, most of his surviving sons went on to have distinguished careers as notable members of the prominent Darwin-Wedgwood family. George, Francis and Horace became Fellows of the Royal Society, as an astronomer, a botanist and and a civil engineer, respectively. His son Leonard, on the other hand, was a soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist and mentor of the statistician and evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher.

Darwin spent many years after his voyage and marriage in extensive research and gave his geological work priority. During this time he corresponded and shared ideas with several naturalists. In 1858, Alfred Russell Wallace sent him an essay in which Wallace described similar ideas to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.

Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. He examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), which was followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.

In recognition of Darwin's contribution to science, he was one of only five 19th-century non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral in the United Kingdom; he was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.

Darwin's theories and writings were key to the development of modern biology. However, Darwin's fame and popularity has led to his name being associated with ideas and movements that have only an indirect relation to his writings or even go directly against his professed beliefs.

Darwin's Children

Between 1839 and 1856, Emma gave birth to ten children, seven of whom survived childhood: