Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, the fifth of six children of wealthy and well-connected parents.

 

The young Charles had a quietly Christian upbringing, but his family life was one of openness to new ideas. His grandfathers had both been important figures of the Enlightenment: Josiah Wedgewood, industrialist and anti-slavery campaigner, and Erasmus Darwin, a doctor whose book ‘Zoonomia’ had set out a radical and highly controversial idea - that one species could 'transmute' into another.

 

Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Darwin secured a place at Edinburgh University to study medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He did not make a good medic. This was long before anaesthetic, and Darwin found the brutal techniques of surgery too stomach-churning to handle. But there was an upside. 

Edinburgh was one of the best places in Britain to study science. It attracted free thinkers with radical opinions that would not have been tolerated in Oxford and Cambridge. Among other things, Darwin heard speakers talk about the latest theories of transmutation, as evolution was then known.

 

Darwin finally went public with his groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection, while making sure that Wallace received some credit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darwin's ideas were presented to Britain's leading Natural History body, the Linnean Society. After consulting with colleagues, Darwin agreed that extracts from his and Wallace's papers should be presented at the same meeting. Wallace, on his return, accepted that Darwin had treated him fairly. But Darwin missed the presentation. A private tragedy struck: his son died of scarlet fever, aged just 18 months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still troubled by ill health, Darwin worked until the end. He died a virtual recluse, surrounded by his wife and a few devoted friends.

 

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection made us rethink our place in the world. The idea that humans shared a common ancestor with apes was a challenge to the foundations of western civilisation.