Portal:Ecology/Selected biography/2

{{Selected biography

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| caption = Charles Darwin

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| born = February 16, 1834

| died = August 8, 1919

| text = Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist.{{Ref_label|A|I|none}} He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.

He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.{{cite book |title=Why Evolution is True |last = Coyne |first=Jerry A. |authorlink=Jerry Coyne |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location= Oxford |isbn=0-19-923084-6 |page=17 |quote=In The Origin, Darwin provided an alternative hypothesis for the development, diversification, and design of life. Much of that book presents evidence that not only supports evolution but at the same time refutes creationism. In Darwin's day, the evidence for his theories was compelling but not completely decisive.}}{{cite book |title=Forerunners of Darwin |last=Glass |first=Bentley |authorlink=Bentley Glass |year=1959 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |location=Baltimore, MD |isbn= 0-8018-0222-9|page=iv |quote=Darwin's solution is a magnificent synthesis of evidence...a synthesis...compelling in honesty and comprehensiveness}} By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.{{Harvnb|van Wyhe|2008}}{{harvnb|Bowler|2003|pp=179, 338, 347}} In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.[http://darwin-online.org.uk/biography.html The Complete Works of Darwin Online – Biography.] darwin-online.org.uk. Retrieved on 2006-12-15
{{Harvnb|Dobzhansky|1973}}As Darwinian scholar Joseph Carroll of the University of Missouri–St. Louis puts it in his introduction to a modern reprint of Darwin's work: "The Origin of Species has special claims on our attention. It is one of the two or three most significant works of all time—one of those works that fundamentally and permanently alter our vision of the world...It is argued with a singularly rigorous consistency but it is also eloquent, imaginatively evocative, and rhetorically compelling." {{cite book |title=On the origin of species by means of natural selection |editor=Carroll, Joseph |year=2003 |publisher=Broadview |location= Peterborough, Ontario|isbn= 1-55111-337-6|page=15 |url= }}

| link = Charles Robert Darwin

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