Charles Darwin
Biography
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was an English naturalist and biologist whose theory of evolution by natural selection transformed humanity's understanding of life on Earth. Born in Shrewsbury to a prosperous medical family, he studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge before joining HMS Beagle in 1831 for a five-year voyage that provided the observations underpinning his life's work. On the Origin of Species (1859) argued that species evolve through the survival of favourable variations, a concept that ignited fierce public debate. In The Descent of Man (1871), he extended his theory explicitly to human beings, exploring sexual selection and the biological kinship between humans and other primates. Despite chronic illness, Darwin produced a vast body of work on subjects ranging from barnacles to earthworms. He was honoured with burial in Westminster Abbey, and his ideas remain the foundation of modern biology.
