Who was Charles Darwin?
A doctor’s son originally from Shropshire, Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809. As a young man he read classics, mathematics and theology at Cambridge with a view to a career in the Church of England. However he preferred riding, shooting and collecting beetles rather than studying, and only with some last minute cramming did he earn his B.A. degree in 1831.
Whilst at Cambridge Darwin attended classes in natural history, and at the end of his studies he was offered the unpaid position of gentleman’s companion to the captain of HMS Beagle, a ship bound on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. The survey took five years, and for two-thirds of that time Darwin was on land collecting specimens and taking careful notes; geological, botanical and biological. (On his travels his health was not very good and he suffered from sea sickness and fever). 
The Beagle returned to England in 1836 and Darwin quickly became a celebrity in scientific circles. With the financial support of his father, and with the encouragement from Cambridge friends, Darwin became a ‘gentleman scientist’, presenting his fossils and zoological discoveries to interested parties.
A page from Darwin's notebooks, around July 1837, showing the first known sketch by Charles Darwin of an evolutionary tree.
He moved to London and began to catalogue his collection and write articles for scientific societies. It was at this time that Darwin began writing ‘secret’ notes about theories he had, such as transmutation, whilst publishing a weighty volume entitled 'The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S.Beagle'.
Darwin’s health began to suffer still further and in 1842 Charles Darwin and his family fled London: in search of peace and quiet they came to Downe village. It was here that Darwin wrote his most famous book, 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ – the book which both scandalised and revolutionised the Victorian world when published in 1859. (The book is hereafter referred to as The Origin).
When first published many leading scientists expressed their disagreement with the contents of the book, some condemned it as harmful: the scientific world was almost wholly against Darwin. However Sir Julian Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas Huxley, became a staunch supporter of evolutionary ideas: it is generally accepted that it was Huxley’s eloquence that was the major factor in Darwin’s theory becoming accepted by the scientific fraternity over the next ten years.
Charles Darwin died in 1882 at the age of 73 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.