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that independently laid out the argument for natural selection, in terms very similar to Darwin’s own. Wallace asked Darwin if he would help get the paper published—obviously an alarming development, because Darwin’s work since 1838 had been dedicated to developing the same theory. Darwin’s scientific friends advised him to gather materials giving evidence of his priority but to have the Wallace paper read before the Linnaean Society, along with a brief account of his own ideas. Immediately after the reading, Darwin began work on an “abstract” of his larger work; the result, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published in 1859. Despite the enormous controversy it generated, Origin was an immense success; it went through six editions in Darwin’s lifetime.

Darwin devoted the rest of his life to researching and writing scientific treatises, developing and expanding parts of his larger argument. His later works include The variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In 1871 Darwin at last addressed directly implications of his theory for humans: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex drew on earlier notes, but it also responded to and incorporated ideas on the subject that had filled intellectual and popular journals since the publication of Origin.

Despite ill health, Darwin continued to develop more evidence for his theories through intense studies of a wide range of organic phenomena—climbing plants, orchids, insectivorous plants, vegetable mold, and worms, to name a few. He died on April 19, 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The World of Charles Darwin and

The Origin of Species

4th Plato develops his theory of Forms, which states that

century B.C. an ideal or archetypal form exists for all matter.

1731 Charles Darwin’s grandfather, English physician and poet Erasmus Darwin, is born.

1794 Publication begins of Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life, which attempts to explain organic life according to evolutionary principles; the book predates similar theories.

1798 In An Essay on the Principle of Population, as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, English economist and sociologist T. R. Malthus rejects the idea that gene tically desirable traits of adult animals are more pro nounced in their offspring.

1809 Charles Robert Darwin is born on February 12 in Shrewsbury, England. Philosophie Zoologique, by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, is published; it is the first work to present a comprehensive theory of transformism, the doctrine that living beings have originated by the modification of some other previ ously existing forms of living matter.

1817 Charles’s mother dies and his older sister begins caring for him.

1818 He attends the Shrewsbury School, which has a strict classical curriculum that fails to rouse his interest.

1825 Darwin begins studying medicine at Edinburgh Uni versity, in Scotland, and encounters a Lamarckian evo lutionary thinker named Robert Grant.

1827 Uninterested in pursuing a career in medicine, he leaves Edinburgh University and enters Christ College, Cambridge University, to begin studies in theology. He

meets J. S. Henslow, a professor of botany, through whom he discovers his love of science.

1830 The first volume of Charles Lyell’s three-volume Principles of Geology is published, in which Lyell interprets Earth’s history as a process of gradual transformation. This work will greatly influence Darwin’s perception of evolution.

831- 1836 Darwin graduates from Cambridge on April 26. He embarks on a five-year exploratory expedition aboard the HMS Beagle. During the trip he studies the geology and natural history of the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and elsewhere, and accumulates data that is germane to the subsequent formation of his theory of evolution and that establishes him imme diately as a respected scientist.

1836 Darwin returns to England on October 2. He spends the next several years cataloging