Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin



Feb.12, 1809-April 19,1882

Charles Darwin was born in the city of Shrewsbbury, England and was raised as a fifth child by a wealthy family. (His father was a physician and son of Erasmus Darwin, a poet, philosopher and naturalist. His mother Susannah Wedgewood, died when Charles was eight.) In 1825, Darwin graduated from the elite school at shrewdsbury. He then attended the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. In 1927 he dropped out and entered the University of Cambridge in order to become a clergyman for the Church of England. There he met Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow. The two figures taught Darwin to become an observer of natural phenomenon and a collector of specimens. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, he was brought aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle as an unpaid naturalist on a scientific expedition around the world.

At the time, most geologists believed in the catastrophist theory. In which all creation was wiped out by ...