Charles Robert Darwin, the fifth child (of six) and second son of Dr. Robert Darwin and his wife Susannah (formerly Wedgwood) of Shrewsbury (pronounced Shrowsberry), a town in the English Midlands next to the Welsh border, was born on 12 February 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln across the Atlantic) (Fig. Preface.1). He was sent to one of England’s famous public (in reality private) schools and then at a young age was directed north, to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, to study medicine. After two years he realized that medicine was not for him, and so he moved south to Cambridge, to work for a degree and prepare for the life of a clergyman in the Church of England. He graduated in 1831.

Through connections he had made as a student, Darwin was offered the chance to join the British warship HMS Beagle, as it set off for South America to map the coastline (Plate I). The voyage took five years, eventually going all the way around the world, returning to England in 1836. By this time, all thoughts of a clerical life had vanished, and Darwin, supported by family money, settled into full-time work as a scientist. He became an evolutionist shortly after the Beagle voyage and discovered the mechanism for which he is famous, natural selection, in 1838. He married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood early in 1839 (Fig. Preface.2), and by that time, starting to show the signs of a still-unknown illness that plagued him for the rest of his life, he settled into the role of a somewhat reclusive invalid. The couple moved to a house in Kent and in all had ten children, seven of whom lived to maturity.