Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) English naturalist and author of the Origin of Species. He suggested that natural variation in a species creates a wide range of individual characteristics some of which are more useful than others. The competition to survive in nature provides a driving force for evolution in the form of natural selection, a mechanism which weeds out those individuals possessing traits less suitable to the enviroment. The implications of his theory to man's own origins fuelled a bitter controversy with the church. Stipple engraving by C.H. Jeens from a photograph by O.G. Rejlander, about 1874.