The Voyage of the Hms Beagle
Overview
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was among the most influential scientists who ever lived. He began his career as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle, on its five-year surveying mission around South America and across the Pacific. Darwin's work was to make the Beagle's journey one of the best documented surveys of its time. His observations would eventually result in his theory of evolution by natural selection. This theory holds that species change gradually because individuals best-suited to their environments are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass their desirable traits to their offspring.
Background
Charles Darwin launched the greatest revolution in the history of biology with his theory of evolution by natural selection. However, like many original thinkers, he did not show extraordinary promise in school. Darwin came from a prominent and wealthy family. His grandfathers were the famous physician Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) and Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), the manufacturer of the fine pottery that bears his name. Erasmus Darwin was a radical freethinker. Wedgwood, a Unitarian, was only slightly more orthodox. Yet their children Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, who met through their fathers' friendship, led a conventional, upper-class English life, and raised their own family in the established Anglican Church.
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