Remembering Charles Darwin, on His 217th Birth Anniversary - 12 February 2026

 

Remembering Charles Darwin, on His 217th Birth Anniversary - As a Tribute to Smt. Gauramma Devendrappa Gurugunti - a motherly figure, who passed away on 10 February, 2026

On February 12, 1809, in the town of Shrewsbury, England, a child was born who would eventually challenge the very foundations of how we perceive life on Earth. Today, as we celebrate the birth anniversary of Charles Robert Darwin, we reflect on a man whose life was a testament to curiosity, resilience, and the courage to be wrong.

Darwin’s path to becoming a legendary naturalist, which we know today, was anything but a straight line. Born into a wealthy and intellectual family—his father, Robert Darwin, was a successful physician, and his grandfather was the famed Erasmus Darwin, was one of the leading intellectuals of eighteenth-century England, a man with a remarkable array of interests and pursuit, a respected physician, a well-known poet, philosopher, botanist, and naturalist -  young Charles was therefore, under immense pressure to follow the family tradition. However, that was not to be.

At 16, Charles Darwin went to Edinburgh University to study medicine. However, the lectures did not appeal to him, and he found the subject dull and, more importantly, Charles Darwin could not bear the sight of blood or the “brutality of surgery” in the pre-anaesthesia era. His father soon realised that medicine was not cut out for his son and therefore he was shifted from medicine and admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to study theology. Although Darwin did not find theology and prospectus to becoming a clergyman appealing, yet the ambience of Cambridge appealed to him. Cambridge exposed him to a network of scientists, including Professor John Stevens Henslow, a botanist who saw in Darwin a "naturalist in the making." This was the Turing point in his career.

 The defining moment of Darwin's life occurred on December 27, 1831. It is a date I hold dear for personal reasons—it is my wife’s birthday—and it serves as a reminder of how one day can signal the start of an epoch-making journey. Darwin joined the HMS Beagle as a self-funded naturalist. For five long years, under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy, the Beagle surveyed the coasts of South America. While the crew mapped the shores, Darwin mapped the history of life. He went beyond his calling and duty, assigned to him. He didn't just collect finches; he documented what would later turn out to be an important piece of evidence of evolution. 

Darwin found fossils of extinct giant armadillos (Glyptodon) that looked remarkably like smaller, living versions. He saw how species on the Galápagos Islands differed slightly from island to island, yet shared a common "ancestral" look. This was the birth of Natural Selection, which was later to become a monumental publication that would eternally etch the name of. Harley Darwin in the annals of scientific history, his publication of his findings, “On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection”.

It took Darwin over 20 years to publish his findings. It must be seen here that the times in which he was living was not conducive to his understanding of the origin of species which in a way went against the clergies, and the powerful Church. Fearing the social and religious backlash, he meticulously gathered evidence until 1859, when he finally released On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The book's premise was revolutionary yet simple: individuals with traits better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. Over generations, these traits accumulate, leading to the formation of new species. Today even as we remember Darwin for his monumental publication on the origin of species, we must also remember that he too could go, wrong like any one of us, the humans, who are known to err - to err is human.

As much as we revere Darwin, he was—like all of us—fallible and could commit mistakes. He not only committed a mistake; he blundered in his understanding of traits of inheritance. This statement of Darwins blunder is best highlighted in Mario Livio’s book, Brilliant Blunders. This is very important for us, Indians, more so as we inch towards exam times and the fear of failures and going wrong has most unfortunately, resulted in precious loss of lives of young lives due to societal pressure to always succeed and not fail. 

Darwin’s greatest struggle was explaining how traits were passed from parent to offspring. He relied on his flawed understanding of how inheritance happened which he called "Blended Inheritance."  Darwin assumed that the "essence" of two parents mixed like liquids (e.g., a tall parent and a short parent produce a medium-height child). Inheritance was not as easy as Darwin thought it to be. If inheritance worked like mixing paint, any new, trait would be diluted and disappear into the population within a few generations. Natural selection would have no "permanent" material to work with.

Unbeknownst to Darwin, a contemporary named Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk, who born in to penury, was solving this exact problem in his monastery garden. Mendel’s experiments with pea plants proved that inheritance is particulate. Traits do not blend; they are passed as discrete "units" (genes). A trait can be hidden in one generation and reappear in the next, perfectly preserved. This was the missing piece of Darwin's puzzle. Darwin had Mendel’s work sent to him, but Mendel’s works remained in his library, the pages reportedly unread.

Darwin’s life teaches us that science is not a collection of absolute truths, but a process of constant refinement. Even his "blunder" regarding inheritance doesn't diminish his greatness; it underscores the reality that progress requires us to build upon the works—and the mistakes—of those who came before - standing on the shoulders of the giants, as the great Newton put it. 

Today, as my wife and I are back in Mumbai, late last night, after attending to the funeral of Gauramma, Devendrappa, Guragunti, who passed away peacefully in her sleep, aged nearly 90 on 10 February, the divinely mother of my dearest friend Dr Umeshchandra, I am reminded that life and death are a part and parcel of the biological law, and we are all part of this "endless forms most beautiful," as Darwin so eloquently put it. 

This piece of tribute to Darwin is therefore my reverence to the passing of the noble soul, Gauramma Guragunti, who was not just the mother of my friend Dr. Umesh, and two of her other siblings and mother-in-law to her sibling’s better half’s and so also brand mother and great grandmother to many of her children’s children, she was also mother to many of us, Umesh’s friends. More importantly to me, Gauramma reminded me of my mother, who unfortunately had passed away when I was just 10 months old, and made me experience what mothers love is all about ever since I first met her in 1977 and ever thereafter, until my last meeting just a month ago, 8 January 2026 when she was frail, yet I could see the same love and affection. When my wife sought her blessings, she blessed her and, as always, reminded her to take good care of me, her dear Shivu, for all times. May you rest in eternal peace, my dear mother, and may you continue to bless us all. 

Om Shanti.

To you, Charles Darwin, thank you for teaching us how to look at the world with wonder and yet reminding us of the mistakes which we are bound to make in our lives, that we must not be afraid of, and to take life and death as part and parcel of the dice that “God plays”.

While commemorating the anniversary of Darwin's publication, I had penned a blog where I chronicle the history, in brief, of the historic occasion of commemoration of the 165th anniversary of Darwin's monumental publication.

https://khened.blogspot.com/2024/11/165th-anniversary-of-charles-darwins.html

Image courtesy: Wikipedia.