Charles Robert Darwin was one of the foremost naturalists in the world, and published a number of detailed works that took some of the new but very vague thoughts and conjectures on the notion of evolution, and compiled them into a series of very credible and intellectual theories, with a compelling body of scientific research and data to back them up.  Darwin’s works transformed that way in which we thought about the roles of nature and humanity, and was one of the most influential and controversial scientific advances ever made.

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on 12 February 1809, and was related to two important men of this time, Josiah Wedgwood the famous china manufacturer and also Erasmus Darwin, who was one of the most prominent intellectuals the 18^th Century.  Darwin had a comfortable upbringing, and originally studied at Edinburgh University with a view to following a medical career.  However his interest in science and the nature of divinity prompted him to move to Cambridge, and in 1831 he joined what was to become a seminal scientific expedition for him, on the survey ship HMS Beagle.

During this time the popular belief in the creation of the world and humanity was that described in Genesis in the Bible, in that God created the world in seven days.  However many intellectuals and great scientists throughout history had dared to question this belief, and the 17^th and 18^th Century saw many new theories on this subject.  Darwin was not the first scientist to become interested in the idea of evolution, and he was influenced by Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’, which highlighted the existence of fossils, clear evidence that animals had existed on the planet for much longer than anyone had first thought, and indeed for much longer than humans.

Darwin’s ideas on evolution themselves evolved over time, and the breakthrough came when he visited the Galapagos Island, which so clearly illustrated how the same species (namely the finch) could evolve uniquely over time to suit individual environments.

The most important thing about Darwin’s theory of evolution was that he worked on it for 20 years, collecting an impressive, and most importantly an almost irrefutable body of methodical scientific evidence to support his theory, so that when he finally published his work ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’ in 1859, his arguments and the evidence he had collected was so overwhelming that it smashed all prevailing theories before it, and quickly changed the way everyone thought about the creation of the world.

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