Introduction

Who was Charles Darwin? Simply said, he was a Cambridge University Theology graduate who traveled around the world making notes, collecting specimens, and making connections between them. He was also the first person to write down what everyone was thinking. Because Evolution was in the air!

Learning

Who was Charles Darwin?

• Born into privilege – wealth on both sides.
• Sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine at 16.
  • Blood and guts disgusted him. Only lasted two years, came home.
• Father allowed him to enroll in Cambridge to study to be a minister.
  • Majored in Theology.
• Loved to shoot and hunt (which helped him on the Beagle voyage)
• Found he liked the science lectures.
  • Prof. Henslow, expert on many sciences, had open lectures that undergraduates were invited to – Darwin arranged an invite.
  • Went out and dissected marine animals found on beaches.
  • Made friends with a taxidermist – who taught him how to mount and stuff birds.
• Observed how people who presented “blasphemous” ideas were banned and ignored.
• These facts stuck with him in later years.

Darwin graduated from Cambridge and was invited to be the ‘naturalist’ on the HMS Beagle. The ship was leaving for a two-year voyage to chart the coast of South America which ended up being a five-year voyage (1831 – 1836).

Important facts to remember:

• When he left on the voyage he was still a creationist.
• Had a major dislike for heated controversy.
• At every stop went ashore and collected vast hordes of specimens and fossils.
• Dissected and made notes or stuffed and shipped specimens back to England.

At the Galapagos Archipelago Darwin noted the differences in animals from island to island. He noticed that the topographical environment of an island and the animals that he found on that island differed according to that environment. The tortoises that had long necks and a saddle shaped shell could reach the branches on shrubs and trees and lived on islands with dry lowlands, while the short neck, round shelled ones could only eat off the ground. He postulated that the short-necked ones could not survive on the dry lowland island but the longnecked ones could survive and therefore reproduce and pass on the long neck saddle shelled genes.

Darwin published his book, On the Origin of Species, many years after the voyage in 1859. His book sold out the day after publication. Darwin’s book contained two major points. He presented his evidence on evolution and that all things alive have descended from earlier species. They have been modified through generations to survive. He then proposed the mechanism for this called natural selection. The theory of Evolution in the 1800’s challenged the contemporary notion at the time of how the world worked, and that bothered people.

Summary

• Charles Darwin graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Theology.
• Traveled on the HMS Beagle from 1831- 1836.
• Collected specimens and fossils from around the world as evidence on which he based his book, On the Origin of Species.
• To explain his observations of those specimens, he proposed the theory of Evolution and the related mechanism of Natural Selection.

Sources:

Evolution and Adaptation. (2020, December 31). Retrieved May 22, 2021, from https://bio.libretexts.org/@go/page/5916

Understanding Evolution. (2021, March 6). Retrieved May 22, 2021, from https://bio.libretexts.org/@go/page/1916

“Understanding Evolution. “By Biology for AP courses. Retrieved from https://openstax.org/books/biology-ap-courses/pages/18-1-understanding-evolution/. Licensed under: CC-BY: Attribution