CHARLES DARWIN, THE GENIUS OF THE EVOLUTION

Charles Darwin

Naturalist Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809.

In 1831, he embarked on a five-year survey voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. His studies of specimens around the globe led him to formulate his theory of evolution and his views on the process of natural selection.

In 1859, he published On the Origin of Species. He died on April 19, 1882, in London.

On December 27, 1831, the HMS Beagle launched its voyage around the world with Darwin in tow. Over the course of the trip, Darwin collected a variety of natural specimens, including birds, plants and fossils. Through hands-on research and experimentation, he had the unique opportunity to closely observe principles of botany, geology and zoology. The Pacific Islands and Galapagos Archipelago were of particular interest to Darwin, as was South America.

Upon his return to England in 1836, Darwin began to write up his findings in the Journal of Researches, published as part of Captain FitzRoy's larger narrative and later edited into the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle. The trip had a monumental effect on Darwin’s view of natural history. He began to develop a revolutionary theory about the origin of living beings that was contrary to the popular view of other naturalists at the time.

More information: HMS Beagle Voyage

Darwin's exposure to specimens all over the globe raised important questions. Other naturalists believed that all species either came into being at the start of the world, or were created over the course of natural history. In either case, the species were believed to remain much the same throughout time. Darwin, however, noticed similarities among species all over the globe, along with variations based on specific locations, leading him to believe that they had gradually evolved from common ancestors. He came to believe that species survived through a process called "natural selection," where species that successfully adapted to meet the changing requirements of their natural habitat thrived, while those that failed to evolve and reproduce died off.

More information: Darwin on Line

In 1858, after years of further scientific investigation, Darwin publically introduced his revolutionary theory of evolution in a letter read at a meeting of the Linnean Society. On November 24, 1859, he published a detailed explanation of his theory in his best-known work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Following a lifetime of devout research, Charles Darwin died at his family home, Down House, in London, on April 19, 1882, and was buried at Westminster Abbey. During the next century, DNA studies revealed evidence of his Theory of Evolution, although controversy surrounding its conflict with Creationism—the religious view that all of nature was born of God—still abounds today.

More information: Learn with Charles Darwin (Game)

Man tends to increase at a greater rate
than his means of subsistence. 

Charles Darwin

MARY SHELLEY & THE POST MODERN PROMETHEUS

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

She became famous thanks to Frankenstein the novel that she started to write in Switzerland. In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story.

She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. 

In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story.

Download Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, 

does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

Mary Shelley

JOSEPH DE CA'TH LON: SWISS PERSONALITY

Joseph de Ca'th Lon

Joseph de Ca’th Lon is an old Grandma’s friend. He was born in Lon, a small village of Switzerland and spent his youth in Finland where he discovered his passion about science in all its aspects but especially in Astronomy, Physics, Archaeology and Anthropology. Later, he stayed in Terrassa (Barcelona) where he studied in the prestigious local university, UPC being a high level student in Technology. After that, he returned to Switzerland where he was working in a historic bank following the familiar tradition. His well-positioned economical status and his cultural baggage offer him the possibility of travelling around the world in his unfinished research of Science mysteries.

The Grandma met Joseph in Saint-Tropez (France) where both of them enjoy their money and prestigious social position every summer. Fans of little countries, Joseph and The Grandma didn’t hesitate of visiting not only their hometowns, Switzerland and Andorra, but Monaco, Vatican City, Caiman Islands, Jamaica or Liechtenstein. As you have been able to discover all these countries have something in common: the yellow colour in their flags!

Since today, it’s a great honour to inform all the families that Joseph is going to join to The Grandma’s Blog and we’re going to explain his incredible adventures plenty of interesting stories about Science, Economy, Technology, History or Astronomy. Prepare yourselves to travel above the stars, visit the most incredible places, discover our past investigating some prehistorical bones without forgetting the old Grandma’s stories about our cultural past.

Put yourself in upright position and fasten seat belts. We start…

For since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear.

Leonhard Euler