BRITANNICA BEGINNER BIOS CHARLES DARWIN NATURALIST Britannica Educational Publishing IN ASSOCIATION WITH ROSEN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES ALEXANDRA HANSON-HARDING
A MAN WHOSE IDEA CHANGED THE WORLD Charles Darwin was an English scientist who studied nature He lived in the 1800s during a time known as the Victorian Age Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland At that time many new ideas and changes were taking place in science and technology One question people were asking asking was why so many kinds of creatures lived on Earth Darwin developed a SCIENTIFIC THEORY that explained why His explanation was simple and made sense It also went against what most people believed at the time His idea was so bold that he had to keep it secret for many years 4 CHAPTER ONE
Darwin’s daring idea was about evolution the theory that all the kinds of living things that exist today changed from earlier types He wasn’t the first person to think about evolution But he was the first person to develop a full-scale theory that explained how evolution works He backed his theory up with solid scientific proof Darwin eventually wrote about evolution in a book called The English scientist Charles Darwin is shown in a photograph from around 1880 Vocabulary A SCIENTIFIC THEORY is an explanation for why things work or how things happen Scientists develop theories based on ideas that can be tested Theories are not based on a guess 5
