Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, then biology at Cambridge.

In 1831 he became the naturalist on HMS Beagle, which was to make a scientific survey of South American waters, and returned in 1836.

By 1846 he had published several works on his geological and zoo-logical discoveries, but he devoted most of his time to his major work 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection' (1859). He postulated that natural selection was the agent for the transmutation of organism during evolution.

He then worked on a series of supplemental treatises, including 'The Descent of Man' (1871), which postulated the descent of the human race from the anthropoid group.

At first Darwin was attacked as an infidel atheist declaring the Bible a lie, but he replied that it increased God's grandeur to believe that the universe had been created with evolution built in.

   Voyage of the Beagle
   The Origin of Species