Background
Early Childhood
Born on February 12th, 1809 in a house nicknamed "the Mount" in Shrewsbury, England, Charles Robert Darwin already had connections to evolution within his family. His grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were proprietors in Lamarck’s theory of evolution--they believed that God was the reason for its existence, and that traits acquired from life were passed down to offspring. His dad was a doctor who treated his patients in the abode he built himself for his family.
His sister taught him before he entered a boarding day-school as a young boy. Despite his famous intellect, Darwin noted that he was a slow learner, and only gained awareness of the surrounding world at around four years of age. He noted how he heard his “Father say that he believed that persons with powerful minds generally had memories extending far back to a very early period of life.” Once he began to go school, he began to procure an inclination towards natural history. His other siblings didn’t seem to put as much thought into the names of different plants and the natural world as he did, he mentions.
His mother died in 1817 when he was eight, and so her memory was shrouded by the grief of his older sisters. This didn’t seem to affect him much, because he was known to spin falsehoods despite his future exploration into the mystery of existence.
University Days
Throughout his later schooling, Darwin’s father continuously pressured him to follow in his footsteps. At first he tried to please his father, but he began to veer off that path after his first year at Edinburgh University. By the second year his father had started to notice that he wasn’t interested in being a doctor, and so Darwin was to attend Christ’s College. Despite being moved, he continued to pursue his true passions of natural history through interaction with others also interested.
Christ’s College ended up working against his father’s favor, as there Darwin met one of his earliest influences on his later career. That influence was Professor Henslow. This professor opened up a space for people to talk about science, and so led to Darwin becoming great friends with him. His good friend, William Darwin Fox, had referred him. He notes in his autobiography that Henslow was a deeply thoughtful and religious man. This led Darwin to explore the connections of the existence of God to science. As exams rolled around, Darwin let go of his unwillingness to study, and became highly invested in this exploration. In his last hurrah of University in 1831, he placed high for examination.
Darwin's Family Tree
Darwin was nicknamed "Gas" because he helped his brother with chemistry.
In Christ’s College, Darwin became very invested in his beetle collection.