Charles Darwin
The first person to present evidence of evolution was an English scientist named Charles Darwin. He was the official naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle during its world voyage (1831-36). The enormous variety of plants and animals that Darwin observed during the voyage gave him the first inkling that living things might change with time, and that they could have evolved from common ancestors. On his return to England, Darwin spent man years gathering evidence. In 1859 he finally published his theory in the book On the Origin of Soecies,
THE FIRST THEORY OF EVOLUTION
Charles Darwin was not the originator of a theory of evolution. One of the first people to suggest that living things might change over time was Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). His ideas were considered a dangerous challenge to the traditional religious teaching that all life had been created at the same time and was unchanging.
In France, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) put forward the first theory of evolution. He suggested that living things could adapt during their lifetime - such as a giraffe stretching its neck to reach food - and pass on these adaptations to their offspring. This idea, now rejected, was accepted for many years. Although many ideas such as these arose before his time, it was Darwin who collected enough evidence to establish evolution as an acceptable, workable theory.
DARWIN’S RESEARCHES
Darwin drew his evidence from many sources. He had seen, at first hand, the variety and distribution of living organisms in South America and in the Galapagos islands during his voyage H.M.S. Beagle. he bred and studied plants at his home, Downe House, in Kent, England. Friends and colleagues sent him plants and animals from around the world and discussed their distribution with him. Darwin examined fossils - preserved remains of earlier life forms. He also studied the work of geologists who suggested that the Earth was hundreds of millions of years old, and still changing.
NATURAL SELECTION
In 1838, Darwin first put forward his theory of natural selection as the underlying process of evolution. This suggested that those individuals best adapted to their environment were more likely to survive and breed, passing on their features to their offspring. In this way, species would change with time and new species could appear. Darwin also suggested that similar species had evolved from a single ancestral species.
PUBLICATION OF DARWIN’S THEORY
Darwin spent the next 20 years working on his theory, but he did not publish his work, because he was concerned about the opposition it would provoke from the Church and from other scientists. In 1859, however, another British naturalist, Alfred Wallace (1823 - 1913), sent an article to Darwin that contained the same ideas about evolution through natural selection. Darwin was forced to act. On November 24, 1859, he published On the Origin of Species. All 1,250 copies sold that day. Darwin’s theory changed the study of living things and has survived, with small modifications, to the present day. Even the most recent scientific studies, such as the function of chromosomes and the structure of DNA, have backed up Darwin’s work.
DARWIN’S VARIED INTERESTS
Charles Darwin was a committed and versatile scientist. As well a developing his theory of evolution, he wrote a book about barnacles, studied the activities of earthworms, produced a theory on the formation of coral reefs, and described how plants were fertilized.