Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of Charles Darwin, achieved fame as a physician and notoriety as a popularizer of evolutionary biology in such poems as "The Botanic Garden," "Zoonomia," "The Loves of the Plants," and "The Temple of Nature." Both of Erasmus's sons were physicians. Charles Darwin's father, Robert, desired that his sons would continue the family tradition, but that was not to be. As Charles Darwin himself said, when he was sixty-seven years old, "I was born a naturalist."

His experiences at school from childhood to undergraduate adulthood confirm that self-analysis. Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, he began his formal education when he was eight and a half years old, at Mr. Case's day school. Here he showed a precocious interest in gardening and in collecting pebbles, minerals, newts, birds' eggs, and beetles. He aspired then to know something of every pebble in front of the...