payment page
-
Louis Agassiz
1807–1873. Swiss-born professor of zoology at Harvard University who rejected Darwin's explanation of the origin of species, preferring instead to believe in "special creation."
-
Samuel Butler
1835–1902. Butler is best known for his utopian satire Erewhon and for his autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. After reading The Origin of Species he became an enthusiastic convert to Darwinism, but he later feuded with Darwin over a translation of a German book on evolution, which Butler claimed contained a deceitful critique of his own Evolution Old and New. He was the grandson of another Samuel Butler, Darwin's headmaster at the Shrewsbury school.
-
Robert Chambers
1802–1871. Author of the 1844 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a popular evolutionist book.
-
George Cuvier
1769–1832. French zoologist and comparative anatomist. Although he was a supporter of the divine creation of species and the geological theory of catastrophism, he helped prepare the way for Darwinism through his studies of anatomical classification and paleontology.
-
William Darwin
Son of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin.
-
Susannah Darwin (Wedgwood)
Wife of Robert Darwin and mother of Charles Darwin.
-
Charles Darwin
Son of Charles and Emma Darwin. Born when Emma was forty-eight years old, he proved to mentally retarded.
-
Henrietta
Daughter of Charles and Emma Darwin.
-
Francis Darwin
Son of Charles and Emma Darwin.
-
Anne Darwin
Daughter of Charles and Emma Darwin.
-
Emma Darwin (Wedgwood)
Wife of Charles Darwin.
-
Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin's grandfather, author of Zoonomia.
-
Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin's brother, opium smoker & runner in London literary circles.
-
Robert Darwin
Charles Darwin's father, a physician.
-
Robert FitzRoy
1805–1865. British naval officer and captain of the HMS Beagle. Despite his key role in its conception, FitzRoy remained a life-long opponent of Darwinism.
-
Robert Grant
Zoologist and early colleague of Charles Darwin.
-
Sir John Herschel
1792–1871. Well-respected astronomer and mathematician who Darwin visited in South Africa.
-
Joseph Hooker
1817–1911. Hooker was a British botanist and a friend and supporter of Darwin. He was renowned for his work the geographical distribution of plants and as the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. He was president of the Royal Society from 1872–1877 and was knighted in 1877.
-
Thomas Henry Huxley
1825–1895. Huxley was a British biologist and enemy of Church authority. His staunch support of Darwin's theory earned him the nickname "Darwin's bulldog."
-
Henry Jenkin
138–1885. Engineer who argued that natural selection was a mathematically impossible way of producing evolutionary change.
-
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
1744–1829. Full name: Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine, Chevalier de Lamarck. French biologist and evolutionist who coined the phrase "biology." He argued for the inheritance of acquired traits, a theory that Darwin initially rejected but later came to accept (incorrectly) as an auxiliary to natural selection. Lamarck's major evolutionary work was his 1809 Zoological Philosophy. He was widely criticized for speculating on the basis of insufficient evidence.
-
Fanny Owen
Daughter of William Owen and friend of Darwin during his Edinburgh and Cambridge years.
-
John Tyndall
1820–1893. A British physicist who studied the transmission of light through the atmosphere; first person to explain why the sky is blue.
-
Alfred Russell Wallace
'Co-discoverer' of natural selection as the source of new species.
-
Josiah Wedgwood
Friend of Erasmus Darwin, founder of a successful pottery, and grandfather of Charles Darwin.
-
Samuel Wilberforce
Bishop of Oxford and opponent of Darwinism.
