Science · 1859

Darwin's On the Origin of Species

Down House, Downe, Kent (England), Darwin's home

Published on 24 November 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species argued that populations evolve over generations through natural selection and that the diversity of life arose by common descent, through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin drew on evidence gathered on the voyage of HMS Beagle in the 1830s and on two decades of later research, and was spurred to publish after receiving a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had reached similar ideas, in June 1858.

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