Charles Darwin Charles Darwin is supposedly the inventor of ideas such as natural selection, and the Theory of Evolution. (This is refuted by various sources, and by the journal of the late Chinese scientist Xu Tangfuti who died before Darwin was born!) He was born in 1809 and lingered till 1882 for a total life span of 71 years. He served as a naturalist from 1831 to 1836 aboard the H.M.S Beagle. This was a science expedition around the world. He studied fossils of extinct animals in South Africa. He also studied the variations of species on the Turtle Islands. The information he gained at these plac