The Life of Charles Darwin
February 12, 1809 – Charles Robert Darwin was born at The Mount in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.
1818 – Darwin enters Shrewsbury Grammar School.
1825 – Darwin’s father removes him from Shrewsbury Grammar School for poor grades and a lack of direction.
October 1825 – Darwin’s father decides that Charles should follow family tradition and become a doctor. He sends Darwin to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Darwin is bored by the study of medicine.
1826 – Darwin learns taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave from Guyana, South America.
1827 – Darwin quits medical school.
1828 – At his father’s insistence, Darwin begins study for the clergy at Christ College. There he attends lectures given by John Stevens Henslow, professor of Botany at Cambridge. By the spring term, Darwin sees the natural sciences as his career path.
April 26, 1831 – Darwin graduates.
December 27, 1831 – Darwin embarks on his famous journey aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.
September 15, 1835 – Darwin’s first sighting of the Galapagos Archipelago.
October 2, 1836 – H.M.S. Beagle docks at Falmouth, England after a voyage of four years, nine months, five days.
1838 – Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, Part I is published. This is the first in a series of five books covering the fossil mammals collected during the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle.1839 – Darwin is elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
1842 – Darwin outlines his treatise on natural selection, but struggles with whether or not to publish the work. He worries that fellow naturalists will not accept his theory. His reasons for not publishing also include his concerns that the church will scorn him and that he will be labeled an atheist.
1859 – Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published. Darwin writes in his introduction that “the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained—namely, that each species has been independently created is erroneous.”
1864 – The X Club is founded. Members meet at the St. George Hotel in London. Their purpose is to discuss pure science without the intrusion of the church or any religious views. The club existed from November 1864 to 1892.
Members of the X-Club included: Joseph Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1865; Thomas Huxley, professor of natural history at the Government School of Mines in London; Edward Frankland, professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution; John Tyndall, professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution; George Busk, retired surgeon for the British Navy; and Thomas Hirst, professor of Mathematics at University College, London.
1869 – The journal Nature is founded by Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley as a voice for the X-Club. One hundred and thirty years later, Nature is one of the most popular and well-respected science journals in the world.
1871 – Darwin publishes his second book, The Descent of Man. In this work, Darwin directly addresses the debate over the origin of mankind, writing that “man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.”
April 19, 1882 – Charles Robert Darwin dies.
April 26, 1882 – Charles Robert Darwin is buried at Westminster Abbey, about twenty feet from the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton.