DARWIN, CHARLES (ROBERT)

born Feb. 12, 1809, The Mount, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng. died April 19, 1882, Down House, Downe, Kent English naturalist, renowned for his documentation of evolution and for a theory of its operation, known as Darwinism. His evolutionary theories, propounded chiefly in two worksOn the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)greatly influenced the scientific and religious tenor of his time. A brief account of Charles Darwin follows; for a full biography, see Darwin. Darwin was reared by his eldest sister from age eight. After an early life that showed little promise of his later prominence he developed an interest in natural history and in 1831 sailed as a naturalist on HMS Beagle to survey the wildlife of the west coast of South America and some Pacific islands. During this five-year voyage he became convinced of the gradual evolution of species. Upon his return to England he worked for 20 years refining his ideas before he began to write a detailed account of evolution in 1856. In 1858 Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, a younger naturalist, that contained a succinct and complete statement of his own ideas about evolution. That same year Darwin's friends arranged that a joint paper on the subject be read before the Linnean Society of London, and in 1859 Darwin published his discoveries in an abstract, On the Origin of Species. Darwin's genius was not confined solely to the study of evolution. He explored many other natural phenomena, including the taxonomy of barnacles, the formation of atolls, the tropic responses of plants to light, and the role of earthworms in soil fertility. Later works include Variation in Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868) and The Descent of Man . . . (1871).