Charles Darwin, a Victorian scientist and naturalist, has become
one of the most famous figures of science to date. Born in 1809 to
an upper-middle-class medical family, he was destined for a career
in either medicine or the Anglican Church. However, he never
completed his medical education and his future changed entirely in
1831 when he joined HMS Beagle as a self-financing, independent
naturalist. On returning to England in 1836 he began to write up
his theories and observations which culminated in a series of
books, most famously On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection in 1859, where he challenged and contradicted
contemporary biological and religious beliefs with two decades
worth of scientific investigation and theory. Darwin's theory of
natural selection is now the most widely accepted scientific model
of how species evolve. He died in 1882 and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
Damien Hirst is an internationally renowned English artist, who has
dominated the art scene in England since the 1990s. Known in
particular for his series of works on death, Hirst here provides a
contemporary, visual take on Darwin's theory of evolution - the
struggle between life and death in nature.
William Bynum is Professor Emeritus of the History of Medicine at
University College, London, and was for many years Head of the
Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of
Medicine. He edited the scholarly journal Medical History from 1980
to 2001, and his previous publications include Science and the
Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century; The Companion
Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (co-edited with Roy
Porter); The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (with Roy
Porter), The Dictionary of Medical Biography (with Helen Bynum),
and History of Medicine- A Very Short Introduction. He lives in
Suffolk.
“[Darwin’s] second great book . . . An intellectually daring feat.” —Richard O. Prum, in The Evolution of Beauty
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