Charles Robert DARWIN
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The seven-year-old Charles Darwin
in 1816
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(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
DARWIN, Charles Robert British scientist,
who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the
development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural
selection. His work was a major influenceиon the life and earth sciences and on modern thought
in general.
Born in
Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, on Feb. 12, 1809, Darwin was the fifth child
of a wealthy and sophisticated
English family. His maternal grandfather was the successful china and pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood; his paternal grandfather was the well-known
18th-century physician and savant Erasmus Darwin. After graduating from the
elite school at Shrewsbury in 1825, young Darwin went to the University of
Edinburgh to study medicine. In 1827 he dropped out of medical school and entered the University of Cambridge, in
preparation for becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, the
22year-old Darwin was taken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle, largely on Henslow's recommendation, as an unpaid
naturalist on a scientific expedition around the world.
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| Darwin chose to marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood |
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| Darwin daughterAnnieIn 1851. |
Darwins had ten children: two died in infancy,
and Annie's death at the age of
ten had a devastating effect on her parents.Charles was a devoted father and uncommonly
attentive to his children. Whenever
they fell ill, he feared that they might have inherited weaknesses from inbreeding due to the close
family ties he shared with his wife and cousin, Emma
Wedgwood. He examined this topic in his writings,
contrasting it with the advantages of crossing amongst many organisms. Despite
his fears, most of the surviving children and many of their descendants went on
to have distinguished careers.
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Darwin in 1842
with his eldest son,
William Erasmus Darwin
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Voyage of the "Beagle".
Darwin's job as naturalist aboard the Beagle gave him the opportunity to
observe the various geological formations found on different continents and
islands along the way, as well as a huge variety of fossils and living
organisms. In his geological observations, Darwin was most impressed with the
effect that natural forces had on shaping the earth's surface.
At the time, most geologists adhered to the so-called catastrophist
theory that the earth had experienced a succession of creations of animal and
plant life, and that each creation had been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe,
such as an upheaval or convulsion of the earth's surface. According to this
theory, the most recent catastrophe, Noah's flood, wiped away all life except
those forms taken into the ark.Theory of Natural Selection.
After returning to
England in 1836, Darwin began recording his ideas about changeability of species in his Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species. Darwin's
explanation for how organisms evolved was brought into sharp focus after he read An Essay
on the Principle of Population (1798), by the British economist Thomas Robert
Malthus, who explained how human populations remain in balance.
Darwin immediately applied Malthus's argument to animals and plants, and by 1838 he had arrived at a sketch of a theory of evolution through natural selection. For the next two decades he worked on his theory and other natural history projects.
Darwin's complete theory was published in 1859, in On the Origin of Species. Often referred to as the "book that shook the world," the Origin sold out on the first day of publication and subsequently went through six editions.
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is essentially that, because of the food-supply problem described by Malthus, the young born to any species intensely compete for survival. Those young that survive to produce the next generation tend to embody favorable natural variations (however slight the advantage may be) the process of natural selection and these variations are passed on by heredity. Therefore, each generation will improve adaptively over the preceding generations, and this gradual and continuous process is the source of the evolution of species.
Natural selection is only part of Darwin's vast conceptual scheme; he also introduced the concept that all related organisms are descended from common ancestors. Moreover, he provided additional support for the older concept that the earth itself is not static but evolving.
Darwin spent the rest of his life expanding on different aspects of problems raised in On the Origin of Species. His later books including The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) were detailed expositions of topics that had been confined to small sections of the Origin.
He died at Down House on 19 April 1882. His last words were to his family, telling Emma "I am not the least afraid of death – Remember what a good wife you have been to me – Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me", then while she rested, he repeatedly told Henrietta and Francis "It's almost worth while to be sick to be nursed by you". He had expected to be buried in St Mary's churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin's colleagues, after public and parliamentary petitioning, William Spottiswoode (President of the Royal Society) arranged for Darwin to be honoured by a major ceremonial funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.
Vocabulary:
Major - главный
Influence- влиять
Wealthy- богатый
Sophisticated
Preparation- подготовка
Clergyman- священнослужитель
Survey- служба
Uncommonly необыкновенно
Inbreeding- межродственное скрещивание
Descendants- потомки
Distinguished- выдающийся
Astronomer- астроном
Opportunity -возможность
Fossils- окаменелости
Adhered- придерживаемый
Changeability- непостоянный
Evolved- развиты
Immediately- немедленно
Applied- применил
Sketch- эскиз
Subsequently- впоследствии
Food-supply- поставка продовольствия
Raised- поднимать
Common- распространенный
Descended - произошедший
Scheme- схема
Ancestors- предки
