Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury in 1809 and was educated at
Shrewsbury School, Edinburgh University and Christ's College
Cambridge. He took his degree in 1831 and in the same year embarked
on a five-year voyage on HMS Beagle as a companion to the captain;
the purpose of the voyage was to chart the coasts of Patagonia and
Tierra del Fuego, and to carry a chain of chronometric readings
round the world.
While he was away some of his letters on scientific matters were
privately published, and on his return he at once took his place
among the leading men of science. In 1839 he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society. Most of the rest of his life was occupied in
publishing the findings of the voyage and in documenting his theory
of the transmutation of species. On the origin of species by means
of natural selection appeared in 1859.
Darwin spent many years with his wife - his cousin Emma Wedgwood,
whom he had married in 1839 - and their children at Down House in
Kent. He died in 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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