On the twelfth of February, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born unto this world by his parents Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (Wedgwood). He had descended from Erasmus Darwin who had first proposed the theory of evolution. He was born and raised in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

Charles’s father was of the “freethought” religion, which meant that he believed in what had been proved. His mother and both parents’ descendants were of the Unitarian religion. His father and mother had him baptized in the Anglican Church soon after birth. He, his mother, and his siblings continued to attend the Unitarian Chapel. In 1817, Charles, who already had a knack for collecting and natural history, joined the day school run by his church’s preacher.

When Charles was eight years old, his mother died. He stopped attending the day school and began staying as a student at the Anglican Shrewsbury School. In 1825, Darwin started apprenticing a doctor. He went to a University to study medicine, but was revolted by surgery, so stopped doing his studies.

In Charles’s second year at the University, he joined a group of natural history enthusiasts called the Plinian society. He made a few small discoveries while in the group. He and Dr. Robert Edmund Grant eventually started working with evolution. Charles was taking a class professed by Robert Jameson that bored him a lot, but he did like the parts about plants.

Charles’s father was very annoyed by his failure to pursue his studies in the medical field. Thus, his father enrolled him in Christ’s College, in Cambridge, so he could become an Anglican parson. He did not like studying. He did like studying the logic of William Paley’s Evidence of Christianity. When final exams came, Darwin passed tenth out of his class of 178. Residential problems kept Charles at Cambridge for a while so he had time to study more of Paley’s work and the work of other philosophers. Mr. Darwin received a letter that said Darwin could co-captain a ship that would chart the coastline of South America. At first, Charles’s father objected to the mission, but was finally persuaded to agree to his son’s participation.

The HMS Beagle set off with Charles on board. While the other men were charting land, Charles got to study nature and animals. He spent most of his time on land making natural history collections. On the Galapagos Islands, Darwin noticed mockingbirds that would start his thinking on evolution. On the way back to England on the ship, Charles Darwin was arranging some notes and wrote “such facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species” (Darwin, 1859) which basically means he has some possible proof of evolution.

Darwin kept working on his theory and his father arranged some investments so that Darwin could be a self-funded scientist. Some of Darwin’s specimens were observed and it showed more in Darwin’s favor. On the sixth of March, 1837, Darwin moved to London so he could be close to his work. By mid-march in 1837, Darwin thought his “red notebook” notes were forming into a theory and that one species does change to another. Darwin made what is thought to be the first evolutionary tree near that same time.

Charles agreed to unrealistic dates to publish a book about some of his findings on the HMS Beagle. The stress caused him to become ill. The doctors told him he should knock off work for a while and live in the country for a few weeks. That is exactly what he did. Once he went back to work, though, he always had problems that would make him sick for days on end. On November 11, 1838, Darwin proposed to his cousin Emma Wedgwood and they were married on January 29, 1839.

Darwin now had outline of his theory of natural selection. Charles had other scientists look over his work and give him constructive criticism. He turned it into a 230-page essay. Hydrotherapy was something that Charles Darwin tried during these times. He found that they helped his medical problems. In 1859, Charles’s daughter Annie fell ill and died. Darwin lost his faith in god.

Mr. Darwin was almost forced to publish his book because another man had published a paper that shared some of the same thoughts as his book. Darwin was halfway through the book when the same man had another paper published. Darwin and the man wrote letters back and forth. It turned out that Darwin was not going to explore this while the other man was, but Darwin would have more detail in his book. Darwin published his book entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The book proved unexpectedly popular when it sold all of its 1,250 copies very quickly. His only notion to the evolution of humans was “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” (Darwin, 1859) The book caused many disputes between religious leaders and scientists alike.

Darwin produced a few more books after this. Darwin had ten children. Of which, two died at infancy. Annie’s death at age ten ended the life of another of his children. Charles Darwin was very nice and paid a lot of attention to his children. Charles Darwin believed in the Bible until his daughter Annie died. The he once said he was Agnostic, or in between believing and not believing. Unlike some stories say, he did not convert to Christianity before he died on the nineteenth of April 1882.

A few things commemorate Mr. Charles Darwin. There is an expanse of water adjoining the Beagle Canal that holds his name, as well as a mountain in the Andes Mountains. Darwin was also rated #16 on Michael H. Hart’s list of most influential figures in history. In 2000, a picture of Charles Darwin replaced Charles Dickens on the bank of England ten-pound note. Darwin has also been the subject of many exhibitions. The 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species will occur in 2009.