Darwin (aged 33). Darwin (aged 33).
With the publication in 1859 of his Origin of Species Charles Darwin gave his name to a new way of seeing ourselves and the world around us. The nineteenth century Darwinian revolution was as profound an intellectual upheaval as was the Copernican revolution of the sixteenth century or the development of quantum mechanics in the twentieth century. When he was a young man, however, no-one could regard Darwin as a person who was likely to precipitate an historic scientific and cultural revolution.
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on 12 February 1809. Erasmus Darwin was his grandfather and his father, Robert Darwin, was successful both as a doctor and as a banker. From his earliest days Charles Darwin showed an equable temperament and he grew into a friendly and inquisitive but not notably intellectual young man. After an unsuccessful try at medicine at Edinburgh University he went up to Christ's College, Cambridge, in January 1828 with the intention of entering the church. There he spent much of his time hunting, shooting and studying natural history rather than the classics or divinity. In later life he wrote that "my time was sadly wasted there". At he age of 19 Darwin seemed to be destined to spend his life uneventfully as a country parson.
In August 1831 Darwin was at home in Shrewsbury for the partridge shooting. Four months later he was on board the survey ship HMS Beagle as she sailed from Plymouth into the winter gales of the English Channel. The agent of this change in the direction of his life was one of his Cambridge tutors, John Henslow. Henslow was professor of botany at the university and he shared Darwin's enthusiasm for natural history. When word came to Cambridge that Captain Robert FitzRoy RN was looking for an expedition naturalist for a circumnavigation Henslow suggested Charles Darwin. Darwin and FitzRoy liked each other immediately and Darwin took the job aboard the Beagle.
Most people find that they overcome seasickness after spending 48 hours at sea. Darwin never became immune to seasickness and for five years he suffered greatly whenever he was aboard the Beagle at sea. The voyage was bearable for him because the Beagle spent considerable periods of time at anchor while using her boats to survey the coasts of Argentina, Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands. During these times Darwin could make long journeys ashore. He gained his reputation as a scientist as a result of the observations he made and the fossils he collected during his expeditions ashore in South America.
The voyage of the Beagle around the world between 1831 and 1836 was the turning point in Darwin's life. Those five years converted him from a feckless undergraduate into a reputable scientist and they provided him with the experience and materials with which he would later revolutionise mankind's ideas about itself.
The best biography of Charles Darwin is by Janet Brown.