Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, the fifth child of a wealthy family. He graduated from Shrewsberry in 1825, and attempted to follow his father in medicine at University of Edinburgh, but eventually entered University of Cambridge (1827) to enter the clergy. He graduated from Cambridge in 11831, and due to the insistence of his friend John Stevens Henslow, he set out on the HMS Beagle. The voyage afforded Darwin the ability to verify Sir Charles Lyell’s geological theories, and debunk the more widely accepted Noah’s ark theory.
He returned from the Galapagos in 1836, where he began noting all of his observations on the HMS Beagle. In 1839, he was elected to the Royal Society. Twenty years after his enter to England, in 1858, Darwin’s theory hit the mainstream. The following year, his theory was published in entirety, which sold out immediately and subsequently evolved through six different editions. Darwin went on to publish The Variations of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), The Decent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In 1878, he was inducted into the French Academy of Science.
Darwin spent the rest of his life contemplating his theories, never allowing them to gain closure. He knew there were problems with Origins. He continued to question his findings until his death on April 19, 1882. He was interred at Westminster Abbey as a means of showing how science and religion can co-exist.
