Charles Darwin
He dropped medicine, was being prepared for the church, and at twenty-two found himself aboard the Beagle as an unpaid ship’s naturalist. Five years of sailing gave him South America, the Galápagos with their finches and tortoises, and a chest of notes out of which everything else grew. He sketched natural selection as early as 1838 and then sat on it for twenty years: he knew how it would be received and went on gathering evidence — barnacles, pigeons, orchids. “On the Origin of Species” appeared in 1859 and sold out on the first day. After it came “The Descent of Man”, the book on the expression of emotions, and a last one on earthworms, which he considered the quiet ploughmen of the earth.
He was born in Shrewsbury on 12 February 1809 at 03:00 local mean time — Britain kept no single time yet, so the hour is reckoned by the longitude of the town. The time comes from the family record.