Darwins Sciences

Darwin s Sciences is the only scientific biography of Charles Darwin to focus purely on his research in various fields, his results, and the implications of those results for his time and ours. Disseminating the latest research findings, both published and unpublished, this book offers an up–to–date, intensive and extensive view of Darwin s life and accomplishments. Uniquely, it sets his discoveries and publications against various contexts, viewing his achievements in light of his life, his culture, and the scholarly commentary generated over time by the Darwin industry , without overwhelming the reader with too much contextual detail and complicated critical or ideological interpretation.

Darwin s Sciences is a biography with a difference: rather than proceeding chronologically, it is organized according to discipline, with separate chapters centering on geology, zoology, botany, social science, and ethics – the intellectual topics and scientific specializations that interested Darwin throughout his life. It challenges the popular conception of Darwin s career as culminating in one great work (On the Origin of Species), showing
how the great naturalist s lifelong interest in the gradual, incremental ways living forms change and adapt generated a series of long– and short–term projects and publications. Taken as a whole, Darwin s distinct accomplishments as geologist, zoologist, botanist, and social scientist support, explain, and amplify his ground–breaking, paradigm–shifting theory of evolution by natural selection.

This book sheds light on Charles Darwin the person, drawing extensively on his correspondence, notes and autobiography, the accounts of his contemporaries and descendants, and cultural history, to uncover Darwin as a paradoxical figure who was both a conventional yet progressive country gentleman and an intellectually brave yet emotionally reluctant iconoclast. This text is an insightful and interesting resource for biologists (undergraduate, postgraduate and professional), particularly evolutionary biologists interested in the deeper implications of Darwin s research, or those taking courses on Darwin in History of Science programs, and general readers interested in learning more about Darwin.

Duncan M. Porter received his BA and MA from Stanford and PhD from Harvard, all in Biological Sciences. A
Postdoctoral Assistantship at Stanford studying the flora of the Galapagos Islands gave him a life–long interest in Charles Darwin. This led him to follow Darwin s footsteps in England, Scotland, Wales, France, Ecuador, Chile, and New Zealand, and wish that he could see more of the places the great man visited. Along the way, Porter was on the faculties of the University of San Francisco, Washington University, and Virginia Tech; collected and wrote about plants from Canada to Chile, Morocco, and Oman; worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and National Science Foundation;  became a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Clare Hall, University of Canterbury, and American Association for the Advancement of Science;  wrote many pages about Darwin; and became Senior Editor and Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University. He is Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech.

Peter W. Graham s scholarly interests center on 19th–century British literature and culture, with particular emphasis on the works and lives of Charles Darwin, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron. Educated at Davidson College and Duke University, he has been a Lilly Post–doctoral Fellow, a Mellon Post–Doctoral Fellow, and, since 1978, a faculty member at Virginia Tech, where he s served as Cutchins Professor of English.  Peter is Director of International Relations for the Messolonghi Byron Research Center in Greece, Vice President of the Byron Society of America, a Life Member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, and a member of several editorial boards. He is author of Jane Austen & Charles Darwin– Naturalists and Novelists, Don Juan and Regency England, and other books, he also co–edited The Portable Darwin with Duncan.