Friday Five: People of Plants: Charles Darwin

This week saw the 2014 International Darwin Day (#DarwinDay on Twitter). So to participate, I've chosen to write this week's Friday Five about the great man himself.

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Charles Robert Darwin was born on the 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury at Mount House, the family home. He was born to Dr Robert Darwin the son of Erasmus Darwin - who himself wrote about evolution in his book Zoonomia - and Susannah Darwin the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood who created the Wedgwood pottery firm. Together, this family is known as the Darwin-Wedgwood family, known to have at least 10 fellows of the Royal Society.

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Charles Darwin is most famous for his seminal work On the Origin of Species. Darwin had written about his theory of natural selection as early as 1838, but it wasn't until Wallace wrote to Darwin in 1858 about his very similar ideas on the mechanisms of evolution that Darwin formally presented his theories on natural selection. Papers from Darwin and Wallace were presented to the Linnean Society outlining their ideas on variation and natural selection. They drew little reaction. Darwin abandoned his 'big book' on natural selection and rapidly wrote On the Origin of Species, publishing on 24 November 1859.

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Darwin's Finches are famous examples of natural selection, but Darwin didn't see their importance initially and didn't label which island they came from! In what must have been a brief lapse of judgement, Darwin didn't label which islands the finches came from. At the time he hadn't even realised that they were all finches, but the story made newspapers when John Gould found them to be a new group of finches containing 12 species. With this new information, Darwin began to see that if each finch was confined to a separate island this would support his ideas regarding transmutation of species

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Darwin had a great talent for observation and a wide interest in the natural world. It is often said that he would still be famous even if he hadn't developed ideas on natural selection. Looking at his vast published work, it's easy to see why. For me, his botanical work has been the most important. This includes books such as The Power of Movement in Plants, which investigated (among other things) tropisms; like how plants grow towards the light. As well as The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, which investigated topics such as how ivy adheres to surfaces.

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Much of the work this giant of science started is only now being fully understood - over 130 years after his death. He is an eminently interesting person. It's no surprise that there are at least seven books about him (Amazon.co.uk search) being published in 2014 - and it'll be no surprise if there are twice as many next year. He is a man that inspires us to look more closely at the things around us, whether it's for science, or just for our own interest. We should take it as a profound message that Darwin's last work was about the humble earthworm.

-Bonus-

There's a wealth of information about Charles Darwin online, so it was difficult (and time consuming!) to find one particular item for the bonus section. With that in mind, I hope that you'll enjoy the embedded video below. Hope to hear from you in the comments!


Resources:
Charles Darwin & Evolution. 2014. Charles Darwin & Evolution. [ONLINE] Available at: http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/pages/index.php?page_id=b6. [Accessed 13 February 2014].
Darwin Online: Biography. 2014. Darwin Online: Biography. [ONLINE] Available at: http://darwin-online.org.uk/biography.html. [Accessed 13 February 2014].
Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2014. Charles Darwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin. [Accessed 13 February 2014].