Like many famous men over the course of history, Charles Darwin gets his name attached to a lot of things that he had nothing to do with.
The great naturalist certainly never came up with the Darwin Awards. And he didn’t coin the phrase “survival of the fittest.” So, what are we to make of his relationship to Darwin Island, exactly? Did he even set foot on the Galápagos island that bears his name?
What Did Charles Darwin Do?
Darwin traveled to the Galápagos, of course. He remains the most famous scientist and historical figure ever to visit the remote archipelago. His experiences there as a young man in the 1830s would ultimately inform his theory of evolution via natural selection, which he published in 1859’s On the Origin of Species, one of the greatest science books of all time.
That theory, which would come to be known as Darwinism, changed how we think about the development of life on earth — including humanity’s — and remains controversial in some circles to this day.
