The Portable Darwin - Darwin, Charles

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Résumé :
Deserves to be as widely read as were the originals when they were first published.-Biological Journal of the Linneas Society. Includes five chapters from The Origin of Speices,complete and unabridged; significant extracts from the works that precede and develop the theory of evolution: The Voyage of the Beagle, The Descent of Man, and The Variations of Animals and Plants; scientific papers, travel writings, letters, and a family memorial; plus a chronology and biography.

Biographie:
Charles Robert Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England, to a wealthy intellectual family, his grandfather being the famous physician Erasmus Darwin. At Cambridge University he formed a friendship with J. S. Henslow, a professor of botany, and that association, along with his enthusiasm for collecting beetles, led to “a burning zeal,” as he wrote in his Autobiography, for the natural sciences. When Henslow obtained for him the post of naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle, the course of his life was fixed. The five-year-long voyage to the Southern Hemisphere between 1831 and 1836 would lay the foundation for his ideas about evolution and natural selection. Upon his return Darwin lived in London before retiring to his residence at Down, a secluded village in Kent. For the next forty years he conducted his research there and wrote the works that would change human understanding forever. Knowing of the resistance from the orthodox scientific and religious communities, Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 only when another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, independently reached the same conclusions. His other works include The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and Recollections of My Mind and Character, also titled Autobiography (1887). Charles Darwin’s Diary of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle was published posthumously in 1933. Darwin died in 1882; he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Duncan M. Porter received his BA and MA from Stanford and his PhD from Harvard in biological sciences. He has worked for the University of San Francisco, Washington University, and Virginia Tech, as well as the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution. He is professor emeritus of biological sciences at Virginia Tech.

Peter Graham received his PhD from Duke University. He was given the Clifford Cutchins Professorship from 2000 to 2005 and was a Jane Austen Society of North America Traveling Scholar from 2009 to 2010. His books include Darwin’s Sciences with Duncan M. Porter, Don Juan and Regency England, and Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists.

Sommaire:
Charles Darwin was a naturalist earned fame for the 'Theory of Evolution'. He was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury England. His father Robert Waring Darwin was a medical doctor and mother Susannah Wedgwood belonged to a famous pottery family. In his childhood he went Shrewsbury School, academically he was not good. For advanced learning, his father sends him to Edinburgh University in Scotland to become a doctor but he was not interested and he joined Christ's College Cambridge. His interests developed in botany thus, he studied John Stevens Henslow's course in botany, though he completed his graduation in 1831. As a naturalist Darwin got an opportunity to go to second sea voyage of H.M.S. Beagle to survey the coast of South America. On his voyage he studied plants and animal's life. His interests in life science evolved and after working more than 20 years, in 1859 his world fame work 'On the Origin of Species' was published. He explained theory of evolution by natural selection. He said that life on earth evolved from a common ancestor. On earth there is struggle for survival between members who have favourable traits they survive and reproduce, it is known as survival of fittest. Well adapted species survived and less became extinct. Earlier Darwin faced criticism but later he earned honour for the theory. Darwin died on 19 April 1882....