Charles Darwin

12 Feb 1809 – 26 Apr 188235 items

lifescience
HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan, Mount Sarmiento behind, from the illustrated 1890 edition of Darwin’s Journal of Researches. Drawing: R. T. Pritchett. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan, Mount Sarmiento behind, from the illustrated 1890 edition of Darwin’s Journal of Researches. Drawing: R. T. Pritchett. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Shrewsbury to Westminster Abbey

Charles Darwin was a doctor’s son who could not stand the sight of surgery, a would-be clergyman who spent his Cambridge years collecting beetles, and the young gentleman companion on a survey ship that sailed round the world. He came home with the questions, and spent twenty years at a country house in Kent answering them before he published On the Origin of Species.

How it is built

Five periods frame the life: Edinburgh, Cambridge, the Beagle voyage, the London years and forty years at Down House. The voyage is drawn on the map as a route round the world, and its landfalls sit inside it. Three shorter bands show the work in progress: the transmutation notebooks, eight years of barnacles and the writing of the Origin.

Threads to follow

  • beagle: the five-year voyage and what it turned up

  • evolution: from the first notebook sketch to the books

  • earth: Darwin the geologist, from coral reefs to worms

  • palaeontology: the fossils of South America

  • family: Emma, the children, and the losses

  • religion: the clash his theory set off

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. — the last sentence of the Origin, first edition (1859)

Items

  1. Born at The Mount, Shrewsbury

    The Mount, Shrewsbury

  2. ≈ 16 years, 7 months

  3. Medical studies at Edinburgh

    ≈ 1 year, 6 months · University of Edinburgh (Old College)

  4. First scientific paper, to the Plinian Society

    University of Edinburgh (Old College)

  5. Cambridge

    ≈ 3 years, 5 months · Christ’s College, Cambridge

  6. Henslow’s letter: a place on the Beagle

    The Mount, Shrewsbury

  7. Voyage of HMS Beagle

    ≈ 4 years, 9 months · Voyage of HMS Beagle, 1831–1836 (main stops)

  8. First landfall: St Jago, Cape Verde

    Porto Praya (Praia), Santiago, Cape Verde

  9. The Brazilian forest, and a quarrel over slavery

    Bahia (Salvador), Brazil

  10. Fossil giants at Punta Alta

    Punta Alta, near Bahía Blanca

  11. The Concepción earthquake

    Concepción, Chile

  12. Across the Andes

    Portillo Pass, Andes

  13. The Beagle reaches the Galápagos

    Chatham Island (San Cristóbal), Galápagos

  14. Coral atolls of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands

    Cocos (Keeling) Islands

  15. Meeting John Herschel at the Cape

    Feldhausen, Claremont, Cape Town

  16. John Gould names the Galápagos birds

  17. The London years

    ≈ 5 years, 6 months

  18. The transmutation notebooks

    ≈ 2 years

  19. “I think”: the first tree of life

    36 Great Marlborough Street, London

  20. Reading Malthus

    36 Great Marlborough Street, London

  21. Marries his cousin Emma Wedgwood

    St Peter’s Church, Maer, Staffordshire

  22. Journal of Researches is published

  23. Down House

    ≈ 39 years, 7 months · Down House, Downe, Kent

  24. “Like confessing a murder”

    Down House, Downe, Kent

  25. The essay of 1844, with a letter to Emma

    Down House, Downe, Kent

  26. The barnacle years

    ≈ 7 years, 11 months · Down House, Downe, Kent

  27. Death of Annie Darwin

    Great Malvern, Worcestershire

  28. Writing the Origin

    ≈ 3 years, 5 months · Down House, Downe, Kent

  29. Wallace’s letter from Ternate

    Down House, Downe, Kent

  30. Darwin and Wallace read at the Linnean Society

    Linnean Society, Burlington House, London

  31. On the Origin of Species is published

  32. The Oxford evolution debate

    Oxford University Museum

  33. The Descent of Man is published

  34. The book on worms

  35. Death at Down House

    Down House, Downe, Kent

  36. Burial in Westminster Abbey

    Westminster Abbey