DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT. — English naturalist and theorist of biology, b. at Shrewsbury on 12 Feb. 1809, d. at Down on 19 Apr. 1882.
A voyage, which lasted from 1831 to 1836, decided the career of D., to whom certain phenomena, observed especially in South America, suggested the first nucleus of his theory. On his return, he drew up the journal of the voyage, now known as *A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World* (London 1839-45), and elaborated his notes on zoology and natural history.
In 1842 he settled at Down in Kent, where he devoted himself to composing a series of works, among which are notable the *Geological Observations*, with the celebrated theory on the origin of atolls, and the work on cirripedes. While collecting materials on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, he received a manuscript by Wallace on the tendency of species to form varieties and on “natural selection,” in which this naturalist arrived at conclusions similar to those which he himself had communicated to friends some years earlier, though unpublished. Wallace submitted his essay to the judgment of Lyell and D., and the latter, struck by the “striking coincidence” (16 June 1858), agreed that in July 1858 Lyell and Hooker should present to the Linnean Society two abstracts, one of his own unpublished essay of 1842 (now recalled), and the other that Wallace had sent him from the Malay Archipelago. The following year (London 1859) saw the publication of *The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection*, an work which went through six editions in England during the author’s lifetime and made him the most popular naturalist of the 19th century.
Two further works on the same subject followed: *The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication* (London 1868) and *The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex* (London 1871). But he published others meanwhile and afterwards, in which the naturalist surpassed the theorist, on the fertilization of orchids, insectivorous plants, cross-fertilization in plants, and the formation of vegetable mould through the action of earthworms—works in which the author’s talent and the importance of his observations remain always inferior to the boldness of the theorist of his earlier writings.
D. died at Down, where he had resided for 40 years, and was buried in London, in Westminster Abbey.
From the religious and philosophical point of view, D. gradually moved away from the religiosity of his youth, arriving at radical doubt, oscillating between a vague deism and agnosticism. Even in the definitive edition of *The Origin of Species* there is mention of the Creator of the “first” or “primary” living form, which merely shows that D. believed evolutionism to be compatible with belief in God: “my views are not necessarily atheistical.” Certainly D. acknowledged that “chance” does not explain the world, and inclined to admit a Creator, but the force of his conclusions was weakened by a perfectly logical doubt in an evolutionist: “if the convictions of a human mind developed from that of lower animals are of any value or worthy of trust at all.”