Darwin Day Feb 12, 2024 — #DarwinDay

As HMS Beagle surveyed the coasts of South America, Darwin theorised about geology and the extinction of giant mammals; watercolour by the ship’s artist Conrad Martens, who replaced Augustus Earle, in Tierra del Fuego

Once again #DarwinDay is here. It is of course Feb 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born in 1809. Well OK, it’s going out a day early.

He is of course celebrated because of his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition, that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science.

How did he end up doing this?

Born into a wealthy family, he could have done anything, so what led him down the path that he took in life?

He started out in life by being inspired by his father, a medical doctor, to also go into medicine and so he attended medical school in Edinburgh. He soon realised this was not for him; the lectures were dull and the surgery was quite distressing (understandably so, people were not under anesthesia).

He soon drifted into natural history and that absorbed a great deal of his attention. His father was of course rather annoyed that he had neglected his medical studies and so he was sent to Cambridge on a track that led to him becoming an Anglican country parson. The hope was that if being a doctor was not for him, then this would set him up for a quiet independent life.