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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

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Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (On the Origin of Species, 1st ed.)

Oil painting of Darwin by Walter William Ouless Etching by Paul Aldophe Rajon

Charles Darwin did not formally publish on the topic of evolution until 1858, when excerpts from an essay he had privately written in 1844 and a portion of a letter to the American botanist Asa Gray were published along with Alfred Russel Wallace’s formal manuscript on the mechanism of natural selection (click here to read all three pieces) in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology. Nevertheless, Darwin wrote extensively about evolution in his private notebooks beginning shortly after his return from the voyage of the Beagle in 1836. In 1842, he wrote his first formal essay on evolution and this was expanded in 1844. These two essays were first published in 1909 (click here to read). Between 1855 and 1858, Darwin worked on what became known as his “Big Species Book” which was subsequently abandoned when he learned that Alfred Russel Wallace had independently elucidated the principle of natural selection and there was a need for expeditious publication of his views. What came next, was the remarkable flurry of writing activity that resulted in On the Origin of Species, published in November of 1859 (click here to read).

Early Evolutionists

  • Ancients
    • Lucretius
  • 1748-1799
    • Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
    • Erasmus Darwin
    • Denis Diderot
    • Johann Wolfgang Goethe
    • John Hunter
    • James Hutton
    • Benoit de Maillet
    • Pierre Louis Maupertuis
    • Sir Richard Sulivan
  • 1800-1839
    • Eduard Joseph d’Alton
    • Jean Baptiste Bory de St. Vincent
    • Ami Boué
    • Leopold von Buch
    • Karl Friedrich Burdach
    • Henry Cheek
    • George Combe
    • Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire
    • Robert Grant
    • William Herbert
    • Robert Jameson
    • Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
    • William Lawrence
    • Patrick Matthew
    • Lorenz Oken
    • Jean Baptiste Julien d’Omalius d’Halloy
    • Jean Louis Marie Poiret
    • Constantine Rafinesque
    • Mortiz Wagner
    • Hewett Watson
    • William Charles Wells
  • 1840-1859
    • Robert Chambers
    • William Chilton
    • Charles Darwin
    • Henry Freke
    • Asa Gray
    • Isadore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
    • Frederic Gerard
    • John Thomas Gulick
    • Samuel Haldeman
    • Joseph Dalton Hooker
    • Thomas Henry Huxley
    • Count Alexander Keyserling
    • Robert Knox
    • Henri Lecoq
    • Charles Lyell
    • Alexander Moritzi
    • Charles Naudin
    • Richard Owen
    • Rev. Baden Powell
    • Hermann Schaaffhausen
    • Matthias Jakob Schleiden
    • Herbert Spencer
    • Charles Southwell
    • Franz Unger
    • Sir Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan
    • Alfred Russel Wallace
Weld Hill Research Building at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the home of the Friedman Lab

The Friedman Lab

Evolutionary History and
Plant Development

Department of Organismic
and Evolutionary Biology
Arnold Arboretum
Harvard University
1300 Centre Street
Boston, MA 02131

Principal Investigator

Dr. William (Ned) Friedman
Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Faculty Fellow of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

Phone: 617.384.7744
Fax: 617.384.6596
Email: ned@oeb.harvard.edu

Administrator

Alison Ring
Special Assistant
Weld Hill Research Building
Office: 617.384.5241
Fax: 617.384.6596
Email: aring@fas.harvard.edu
Copyright © Friedman Lab. Site by Academic Web Pages
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