Charles Darwin

12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882
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An English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection transformed the life sciences. Five years as naturalist aboard HMS Beagle (1831–36) gave him the observations from which, after two decades’ further work, he wrote On the Origin of Species (1859). Alfred Russel Wallace had reached the same idea independently, and their papers were read together in 1858.

1859
On the Origin of Species

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), published on 24 November 1859, is a work of…

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