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of his old friends were left; he seldom visited London or attended scientific meetings. Darwin had never been a great teacher, or a talented research worker with students about him: in no way was he a brilliant man. But his research, especially the thinking and writing of his first fifty years, shook Victorian England and made his name renowned throughout Europe and North America. He was respected by many scientists and hated by others, and his theory is as lively and controversial today as it was in his own lifetime. What was so special about Charles Darwin and his theory on the origins of species ? Darwin’s theory of biological evolution tries to explain how and why there are so many kinds (or species) of plants and animals in the world. It suggests that they

Charles Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species forever changed the way in which people view the world.

originated from different ancestral species that lived in the past and are now extinct. Each modern species has evolved—changed over thousands or millions of years from its ancestral form—by a process of selection

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