Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 and as a child loved the outdoors and collecting plants and insects.

Growing up he was undecided whether to become a physician or a clergyman and abandoned his medicine course at the University of Edinburgh to study theology at Cambridge.

When he was 22, Darwin went on a five-year round-the-world trip aboard HMS Beagle collecting fossils and organisms and investigating the geology of the different places he visited.

Darwin's travels inspired his theory that evolution occurs by the process of 'natural selection' where the 'fittest' animals or plants - those with the characteristics best suited to their environment - are more likely to survive and reproduce. These advantageous characteristics are then passed on to offspring and become more common, causing species' to change over time.

His seminal work On The Origin Of The Species, which popularised the theory, was published in 1859 and drew fierce criticism from the Church of England for the way it challenged the notion of divine creation.

Darwin's The Descent of Man, published in 1871, aroused even greater debate as it suggested that humans descended from apes.

Although Darwin is the most familiar name associated with evolution, he was only persuaded to publish his work when another young scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, came forward having independently come up with a similar explanation for how evolution occurs.

He married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839 and three years later they moved to the house in Downe, Kent, where they would stay for the rest of their lives - and which has just been nominated to be preserved as a world heritage site.

Darwin suffered from an unexplained illness for much of his adult life which it is thought he may have picked up during the Beagle voyage.

He died in Downe on April 19, 1882 and was given a state funeral. His body is buried in Westminster Abbey.