Growing up, Charles Darwin was always attracted to the sciences. In 1825 his father sent him to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. There he was exposed to many of the dissenting ideas of the time, including those of Robert Edmond Grant, a former student of the French evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. He transferred to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1828, where his mentors mostly endorsed the idea of providential design. A botany professor suggested he join a voyage on the HMS Beagle—a trip that would provide him with much of his evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection.
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