Charles Robert Darwin was born in Sherbury in 1809. He was the grandson of the famous naturalist-physician Erasmus Darwin.
Charles had a lifelong passion for biology. As a boy, he loved to walk in the countryside collecting insects, flowers and minerals. On his father's wish he spent three years at Cambridge studying medicine. But Charles did not like this. He spent a lot of time with a zoologist friend, watching birds and other animals.
Shortly after his graduation, Darwin received an invitation to become a naturalist on a survey voyage of ``Beagle''. He went to South America in 1831 and returned in 1836. In this voyage round the world he looked carefully at thousands of living things in the sea and on land and came to very important conclusions. After his return he married his cousin, a rich woman, whose money allowed him to devote the rest of his life to scientific research.
His most important work on natural physiology, ``On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection'', was published in 1859. His ``Descent of Man'' followed in 1871 and his ``Autobiography'' in 1887. In his works Darwin showed the evolution of the living creatures from the point of view of science and put an end to the legend that plants and animals had always been the same, as created by a mysterious power.