A quiz question · medium
What finally pushed Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after twenty years of delay?
Friends arranged a joint Linnean Society reading that famously impressed no one; Darwin then compressed his planned big book into the Origin, which sold out at once.
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Charles Darwin Charles Darwin (1809-1882) sailed on the Beagle for five years, spent two decades quietly amassing evidence, and — prompted by Wallace's independent discovery — published On the Origin of Species in 1859, establishing evolution by natural selection as biology's organising idea. He worked from a country house through chronic illness, and was buried, a religious sceptic, in Westminster Abbey.
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