After a five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle, followed by years of thought, Charles Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection' in 1859 AD, and set off a philosophical and religious firestorm that has yet to abate.

Born 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was the fifth of six children, the next in a long line of scientists. Since his mother Susanna had died when the boy was eight, there was no cushion to the sharp edges of learning in his life. At the age of 16, Charles entered Edinburgh College and choose to immerse himself in natural history. Following graduation from Christ’s College at Cambridge in 1831, his professor recommended Charles for a naturalist’s position aboard a British Admiralty survey ship, set to voyage around the world. Through direct observation and the collection of samples (birds, mice, and other small once-living creatures), especially on the isolated Galapagos archipelago, Darwin began to evolve a theory. Upon his return, he wrote upon his musings in the 'Journal of Researches.'

In 1858, Darwin introduced his revolutionary theory of evolution in a letter read at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London, a “learned” body devoted to the study of taxonomy. The next year, built on the basis of this paper, the great book was published. Although Charles wrote a number of other treatises – notably 'The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,' which set off its own controversy among the Victorians – none were as evolutionary for civilization. Following a lifetime of research, Darwin died in London in April 1882.