The Voyage of the Beagle

Content Warning: This section references racism, imperialism, and suicide.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is one of the most influential figures in the history of science, and his ideas on the Adaptation of Species to Their Environment have had a profound impact on how we as humans understand the world around us. Born in Shrewsbury, England, Darwin grew up in a family of scientists and intellectuals: His father was a well-known doctor, and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a renowned botanist. In 1825, Darwin enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, but he found the subject unappealing and left after two years. He then enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he became interested in natural theology, the study of God’s design in the natural world.

Darwin’s five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle (1831-1836) was essential to his development as a scientist and a thinker. As a naturalist and companion to the ship’s captain, Robert FitzRoy, Darwin made numerous observations and collected specimens that would later inform his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s tenure on the HMS Beagle was also a time of profound personal development. At the start of the voyage, he was a young man with limited experience of the world beyond England.