The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology

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Darwin, Charles Robert

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–82) [Bi].
British biologist and naturalist who developed and expounded the theory of evolution by natural selection and the survival of the fittest. After two years as a medical student in Edinburgh he earned a BA degree at Cambridge University in 1831. Here he met Adam Sedgwick and John Henslow, the latter of whom recommended him for the post of naturalist on the expedition ship The Beagle. Darwin used the trip, between c.1831 and 1836 BC, to make observations on biology and geology that would last him his entire career. Between c.1846 and 1854 BC he spent much time researching the classification, variation, and origins of animal species. After the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace sent Darwin a manuscript outlining similar evolutionary thinking, he published his abstract On the origin of species (1859, London), documenting his evidence for the operation of biological evolution. He later became...

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