Charles Darwin: The scientist as hero Authors Richard Fortey Abstract There are few figures that have attained quite the cultural significance of Charles Darwin. Here is the scientist as we (our fellow scientists) would like the creature to be portrayed: he was a good human being as well as a creative one and he stood for a scientific advance that could be grasped by everyone. His idea of common descent is a simple one and it really did change the way we see the world; just as knowledge of genes and the genetic code really has transformed biology and medicine. This article takes a look at Darwin and the history of life more specifically. It has become clear that the world evolved, and life with it. The story of the change from a world dominated by prokaryotes (lacking organised nuclei) at 3.5 billion years ago to the appearance of eukaryotes with nuclei and of sexually differentiated organisms at about 1300 million years ago, and thence to complex organisms that achieved large size 700 million years later is both a tribute to Darwinian intuition and a story with new developments which I will explore. Downloads Text complet (Català) Published 2010-06-21 Issue 5-2 Section Celebration of the Darwin Year 2009 License This work is subject, unless the contrary is indicated in the text, the photographs or in other illustrations, to an Attribution —Non-Commercial— No Derivative Works 3.0 Creative Commons License, the full text of which can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work provided that the author is credited and reuse of the material is restricted to non-commercial purposes only and that no derivative works are created from the original material.
