Charles Darwin was the scientist whose perseverance and wisdom changed the way professional scientists, amateurs, and almost everyone else viewed the world. He presented a convincing case that all life-forms had evolved from a common ancestor, and for a mechanism, natural selection, by which evolution occurs. Earlier scholars had proposed evolutionary theories, but, until Charles Darwin, no proposals of evolution were credible.

Although Charles Darwin remains a popular target for antievolutionists, and for evolutionists who have their own new theories of evolution, the carefulness of Darwin's work and breadth of his imagination have assured that his theory has survived far longer than he might have imagined. His personal integrity and humility have also made him one of the most admired scientific figures in history.

Charles Robert Darwin was born February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England, the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born in the state of Kentucky. Both men, in different ways, led the human mind to consider new possibilities and freedoms without which future progress would not have been possible. Darwin, like many other aristocratic Englishmen, was born into a rich and inbred family. His father, Robert Darwin, was a prominent physician, and his mother, Susannah Wedgwood Darwin, was an heir of the Wedgwood pottery fortune. Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood were, in addition, cousins. Unlike other rich inbred Englishmen, Charles Darwin was to put his inherited wealth to better use than perhaps anyone ever has.

Darwin had three older sisters, an older brother, and a younger sister. Scholars do not know what kind of impact the death of Darwin's mother had upon him. Her death was painful and prolonged, and Darwin was only eight years old. Whether this event might have inclined him to think more of evolutionary contingency, rather than divine benevolence, as the ruling order of the world, scholars can only speculate. . .

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