| Physician,
born in Elton, Nottinghamshire, C England, UK, the grandfather of
Charles
Darwin. He studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, and at Lichfield
became a popular physician and prominent figure, known for his freethinking
opinions, poetry, large botanical garden, mechanical inventions, and position
in the Lunar Society. Many of his ideas on evolution anticipated later
theories. His chief prose work is Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life
(1794--6). After his second marriage (1781), he settled in Derby. |