Charles robert darwin biography summary organizer

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire to Robert Waring Darwin and of Susannah Wedgwood. His grandfather Josiah Wedgewood was a well known china manufacturer and his other grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a physician, poet and one of the leading intellectuals of the time.

Darwin had planned medicine, but in 1828 at the insistence of his father switched to the study of divinity at Christ's College, Cambridge University.

Upon graduation he did not have strong enough grades to secure employment, however, he was offered a position as ship's naturalist aboard the H. M.S. Beagle.

Charles darwin biography

The Beagle set sail from England on December 27th 1831 on what was to be a five year journey. It was on this voyage and, in particular his time on the Galapagos Islands 500 miles east of South America, that the idea of Natural Selection he would present in the Origin of Species began to take shape.

Most Europeans at the time saw the bible as the infallible and literal wor