Charles Darwin is easily one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century because of his contributions to the science of biology.

Darwin lived in England into a fairly affluent family. His father hoped he would become a doctor, but instead he pursued the natural sciences. His time as a student at Cambridge offered him the opportunity to travel to the Galapagos Islands on the Beagle, where as a collector he developed his own theories of evolution and natural selection. Up returning to England he began developing these theories and published them into a book.

Darwin is best known for his ides regarding evolution and natural selection, which started a revolution in the sciences that continues today. In a nutshell, the ideas he outlined in his many works, including Origin of the Species, state that all life comes from common ancestry. He went on to say that the diversity in the natural world is due to a process known as natural selection where some traits die out and other traits lead to evolution of a species.

Darwin’s work founded an entirely new field of evolutionary biology. His processes and theories regarding evolution thought caused a stir in the scientific community that moved forward the experimental model and the process of observation.

It is difficult to assess whether he or Martin Luther King are more important to humanity since they worked in two vastly different fields. While Charles Darwin recieve high importance among scientists, he would probably rank second to thinkers wuch as Galileo and Newton because their discoveries and processes were stepping stones in his own processes.