An Interview with Charles Darwin

1. An Interview with Charles Darwin Classe 2C1 – A.S. 2008-09 ITIS “Paolo Carcano” - Como

2. Good morning Mr. Darwin,we are second year students of a technical school in Como and we study chemistry; we would like to ask you some questions about your life and your theories Ok it’s a pleasure!

3. Let’s start from some biographical info; when and where were you born? I was born on 12th February 1809 in Shrewsbury; I was the fifth of six children. My father was a doctor.

4. At first, I went to university in Edinburgh to study medicine but I found it disgusting so my father, who worried about my future, sent me to Christ’s College in Cambridge to become a clergymen. But I was distracted by other interests so… no I wasn’t a good student! Where did you study? Where you a good student?

5. What were these other interests? I liked reading books about natural history and collecting insects, rocks and shells. I also observed birds and fish.

6. When was your famous journey on the Beagle and were did you go? We left England in 1831 for a five- year voyage. We visited South America and Australasia, in particular the Galapagos Islands.

7. What in particular did you see there that made you think of your theory? I saw different types of tortoises and finches that particularly struck me because they were similar but also different, for example for their diet.

8. So when you published “On the Origin of Species” what were the ideas you expressed in it? I claimed that living species were not fixed, but were the product of a gradual process of change driven by natural Selection: the survival and reproduction of organisms that were most suited to their environment, at the expense of those less successful.

9. Did you have problems with your contemporaries and did you fight for your ideas? Yes, I had problems with my contemporaries because they despised and mocked my theories; in fact they believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible. I didn’t fight for my ideas, I preferred to continue studying, but my good friend T.H Huxley did!

10. What did you regret at the time? I regretted that I didn’t have many fossils to prove my idea of a common ancestry; I also regretted that I didn’t know anything about how traits are inherited and passed from generation to generation. I didn’t know that there was DNA!

11. Have you been following the development of your theories in the last 150 years? Yes, I have read a lot of scientific articles, books and nowadays, web-pages about the development of my theories.

12. In the light of what we know now, do you think you made any mistakes ? Yes, I made a mistakes about speciation; I described very well how a species changes through time but I didn’t explain how one splits into two. I think it was also wrong not to consider Mendel’s theory.

13. However, do you think that modern discoveries have proved you theory to be mostly right? Yes, I think that modern discoveries, like DNA and fossils, have proved my theories. The discovery of DNA explains how traits are passed on, including the advantageous ones, and the fossil record shows that there really are transitional forms.

14. So what do you think are the most important developments of your theory nowadays? My theory is used in a lot of fields, first of all in biology but in culture, language and medicine too.

15. What are you most proud of? I’m very proud of the developments in medicine. For example now scientists know that the continuous evolution of bacterial pathogens requires that they persist in discovering new forms of antibiotics; they can never stop studying!

16. You can visit these websites: darwin-online.org.uk/, www.aboutdarwin.com/ and www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/, where you can read everything about my life and work, and www.wellcometreeoflife.org where you can see an interesting documentary on how species evolved. What do you advise we read or watch to learn more about your theories?