Charles Darwin left Edinburgh University after spending an unhappy year studying medicine. It was, therefore, decided by his father that, to continue his education, Charles should enter Cambridge University and study for an ordinary degree that would in time qualify him to enter the Church of England.
Darwin joined Christ’s College, Cambridge in January 1828. His school education had been rather patchy and unsuccessful so he needed extra Latin tuition before he could embark on his degree. He eventually graduated early in 1831, but never took holy orders.
His time at Cambridge was very enjoyable, although he considered that “during my three years at Cambridge my time was wasted” and he bitterly regretted not persisting with mathematics. He “got into a sporting set with some dissipated…fellows…we sometimes drank too much…” But he also carried on with his natural history and developed an overwhelming passion for beetle-collecting.
Charles only attended one set of lectures at Cambridge, the botany course of Professor Henslow and “liked them much for their extreme clearness and the admirable illustrations”. He spent as much time as possible with Henslow – at the Professor’s house on Friday evenings where great men would gather to discuss science, on walks around Cambridge during which Henslow talked about every subject in natural history, and on excursions made by coach or barge to more distant places with his fellow botany students.
Henslow was a great research scientist as well as a great teacher. His own obsession was with the importance of variation in nature in solving the puzzle of the nature of species. Darwin clearly absorbed this message and collected plants for Henslow in Wales and later on the Beagle voyage, displaying the variation he observed in natural populations.
Henslow identified that Darwin was an exceptional natural historian but needed more field experience in geology than could be gained in the lowlands of Cambridge. So during the summer of 1831 he sent Darwin to North Wales with his colleague Professor Adam Sedgwick to be trained in the “hard-rock” country of Snowdonia.
When Darwin returned home to Shrewsbury he found a letter from Henslow. In it Henslow informed him of the imminent offer from Captain Fitzroy of HMS Beagle of the position of companion on a voyage to South America and home via the East Indies – a two-year round-the-world trip. Henslow had recommended him as “the best person I know to observe, note and collect everything…in natural history”.
