1731-1802

English naturalist and physician whose wide range of scientific interests established him as the leader of the Lunar Society, an association that included some of the most important British scientists and inventors of the eighteenth century. Although his grandson, Charles Darwin, denied being influenced by Erasmus Darwin's evolutionary speculations, Erasmus Darwin's work was widely known in its time. Erasmus Darwin's major treatise, Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life (1794-96), deals with medicine, pathology, and the mutability of species.