His grandfathers had both been important figures of the Enlightenment: Josiah Wedgewood, industrialist and anti-slavery campaigner, and Erasmus Darwin, a doctor whose book ‘Zoonomia’ had set ...

He was born in Shrewsbury on 12th February 1809, son of Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848) and Susannah, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood. He studied with his brother Erasmus at Edinburgh University but ...