Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
9 - The Darwins in Cambridge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
Summary
The earliest member of the Darwin family to enter the University is recorded by Freeman as William Darwin of Lincoln (1620–75), who matriculated in 1640 from Magdalene College. He did not take a degree, presumably because he left in 1642 to serve the King as Captain Lieutenant in Sir William Pelham's troop of horse, as a result of which his lands were forfeited during the Commonwealth. He went to Lincoln's Inn in 1645, where he qualified, and after the Restoration he became Recorder of the City of Lincoln. His son, another William (1655–82), and his grandson Robert (1680–1754) did not come up to Cambridge, but Robert was a barrister described by a contemporary as ‘a person of curiousity’ from whom all the later Darwins with academic pretensions were descended.
Robert Waring Darwin (1724–1816), head of the family in the ninth generation listed by the genealogists, matriculated from St John's in 1743, but apparently did not take a degree. He qualified as a barrister, though he never practised, nor did he marry. Unlike his younger brother Erasmus he had strong taste for poetry, and setting a pattern for what was to come, was the first of the Darwins to write a book, Principia Botanica, or a Concise and Easy Introduction to the Sexual System of Linnaeus, which ran to three editions.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Cambridge Minds , pp. 110 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994