Charles Darwin Biography Essay

On the twelfth of February, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born unto this world by his parents Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin (Wedgwood). He had descended from Erasmus Darwin who had first proposed the theory of evolution. He was born and raised in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

Charles’s father was of the “freethought” religion, which meant that he believed in what had been proved. His mother and both parents’ descendants were of the Unitarian religion. His father and mother had him baptized in the Anglican Church soon after birth. He, his mother, and his siblings continued to attend the Unitarian Chapel. In 1817, Charles, who already had a knack for collecting and natural history, joined the day school run by his church’s preacher.

When Charles was eight years old, his mother died. He stopped attending the day school and began staying as a student at the Anglican Shrewsbury School. In 1825, Darwin started apprenticing a doctor. He went to a University to study medicine, but was revolted by surgery, so stopped doing his studies.

In Charles’s second year at the University, he joined a group of natural history enthusiasts called the Plinian society. He made a few small discoveries while in the group. He and Dr. Robert Edmund Grant eventually started working with evolution. Charles was taking a class professed by Robert Jameson that bored him a lot, but he did like the parts about plants.

Charles’s father was very annoyed by his failure to pursue his studies in the medical field. Thus, his father enrolled him in Christ’s College, in Cambridge, so he could become an Anglican parson. He did not like studying. He did like studying the logic of William Paley’s Evidence of Christianity. When final exams came, Darwin passed tenth out of his class of 178. Residential problems kept Charles at Cambridge for a while so he had time to study more of Paley’s work and the work of other philosophers. Mr. Darwin received a letter that said Darwin could co-captain a ship that would chart the coastline of South America. At first, Charles’s father objected to the mission, but was finally persuaded to agree to his son’s participation.

The HMS Beagle set off with Charles on board. While the other men were charting land, Charles got to study nature and animals. He spent most of his time on land making natural history collections. On the Galapagos Islands, Darwin noticed mockingbirds that would start his thinking on evolution. On the way back to England on the ship, Charles Darwin was arranging some notes and wrote “such facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species” (Darwin, 1859) which basically means he has some possible proof of evolution.