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Charles Darwin
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Terms, Events, and Important People
Terms
Royal Society -
Full
name: Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge.
Founded in 1660 and granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1662,
the society served as a meeting place for independent scientists.
In 1665 it started publishing a journal of research by its members,
the Philosophical Transactions. Famous members
include Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.
Events
Voyage of the Beagle
-
1831–1836. The HMS Beagle, captained
by Robert FitzRoy, spent five years mapping the coast of South
America. Charles Darwin joined the Beagle as a naturalist
and it was on this trip that he made many of the observations that
contributed to his invention of the theory of evolution by natural
selection.
People
Louis Agassiz -
1807–1873.
Swiss-born professor of zoology at Harvard University who rejected
Darwin's explanation of the origin of species, preferring instead to
believe in "special creation."
Samuel Butler -
1835–1902.
Butler is best known for his utopian satire Erewhon and
for his autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. After
reading The Origin of Species he became an enthusiastic
convert to Darwinism, but he later feuded with Darwin over a translation
of a German book on evolution, which Butler claimed contained a
deceitful critique of his own Evolution Old and New. He
was the grandson of another Samuel Butler, Darwin's headmaster
at the Shrewsbury school.
Robert Chambers -
1802–1871. Author of the 1844 Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation, a popular evolutionist book.
George Cuvier -
1769–1832.
French zoologist and comparative anatomist. Although he was a supporter
of the divine creation of species and the geological theory of catastrophism,
he helped prepare the way for Darwinism through his studies of
anatomical classification and paleontology.
Charles Darwin -
Son of Charles and Emma Darwin. Born when Emma was
forty-eight years old, he proved to mentally retarded.
Robert FitzRoy -
1805–1865. British naval officer and captain of the
HMS Beagle. Despite his key role in its conception, FitzRoy
remained a life-long opponent of Darwinism.
Sir John Herschel -
1792–1871. Well-respected astronomer and mathematician
who Darwin visited in South Africa.
Joseph Hooker -
1817–1911.
Hooker was a British botanist and a friend and supporter of Darwin.
He was renowned for his work the geographical distribution of plants
and as the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. He was
president of the Royal Society from 1872–1877 and was knighted
in 1877.
Thomas Henry Huxley -
1825–1895. Huxley was a British biologist and enemy
of Church authority. His staunch support of Darwin's theory earned
him the nickname "Darwin's bulldog."
Henry Jenkin -
138–1885.
Engineer who argued that natural selection was a mathematically
impossible way of producing evolutionary change.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck -
1744–1829. Full name: Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine,
Chevalier de Lamarck. French biologist and evolutionist who coined
the phrase "biology." He argued for the inheritance of acquired traits,
a theory that Darwin initially rejected but later came to accept
(incorrectly) as an auxiliary to natural selection. Lamarck's major
evolutionary work was his 1809 Zoological Philosophy. He
was widely criticized for speculating on the basis of insufficient
evidence.
Fanny Owen -
Daughter of William Owen and friend of Darwin during his Edinburgh
and Cambridge years.
John Tyndall -
1820–1893.
A British physicist who studied the transmission of light through
the atmosphere; first person to explain why the sky is blue.
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