Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin is a university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher as the University of Berlin in 1809, opened in 1810, making it the oldest of Berlin's four universities. From 1810 until its closure in 1945, it was named Friedrich Wilhelm University. During the Cold War the university found itself in East Berlin and was de facto split in two when the Free University of Berlin opened in West Berlin; the university received its current name in honour of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1949. The university is divided into nine faculties, including its medical school shared with the Free University of Berlin, has a student enrollment of around 32,000 students, offers degree programmes in some 189 disciplines from undergraduate to postdoctorate level, its main campus is located on the Unter den Linden boulevard in central Berlin.
The university is known worldwide for pioneering the Humboldtian model of higher education, which has influenced other European and Western universities, the university has been called "the mother of all modern universities."As of 2017, the university has been associated with 55 Nobel Prize winners, is considered one of the best universities in Europe as well as one of the most prestigious universities in the world for arts and humanities. It was regarded as the world's preeminent university for the natural sciences during the 19th and early 20th century, is linked to major breakthroughs in physics and other sciences by its professors such as Albert Einstein. Former faculty and notable alumni include eminent philosophers, artists, politicians, mathematicians and Heads of State; the University of Berlin was established on 16 August 1809, on the initiative of the liberal Prussian educational politician Wilhelm von Humboldt by King Friedrich Wilhelm III, during the period of the Prussian Reform Movement.
The university was located in a palace constructed from 1748-1766 for the late Prince Henry, the younger brother of Frederick the Great. After his widow and her ninety-member staff moved out, the first unofficial lectures were given in the building in the winter of 1809. Humboldt faced great resistance to his ideas, he submitted his resignation to the King in April 1810, was not present when the school opened that fall. The first students were admitted on 6 October 1810, the first semester started on 10 October 1810, with 256 students and 52 lecturers in faculties of law, medicine and philosophy under rector Theodor Schmalz; the university celebrates 15 October 1810 as the date of its opening. From 1828 to 1945, the school was named the Friedrich Wilhelm University, in honor of its founder. Ludwig Feuerbach one of the students, made a comment on the university in 1826: "There is no question here of drinking and plesant communal outings. Compared to this temple of work, the other universities appear like public houses."The university has been home to many of Germany's greatest thinkers of the past two centuries, among them the subjective idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, the absolute idealist philosopher G.
W. F. Hegel, the Romantic legal theorist Friedrich Carl von Savigny, the pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the objective idealist philosopher Friedrich Schelling, cultural critic Walter Benjamin, famous physicists Albert Einstein and Max Planck; the founders of Marxist theory Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels attended the university, as did poet Heinrich Heine, novelist Alfred Döblin, founder of structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure, German unifier Otto von Bismarck, Communist Party of Germany founder Karl Liebknecht, African American Pan Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois and European unifier Robert Schuman, as well as the influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s; the structure of German research-intensive universities served as a model for institutions like Johns Hopkins University. Further, it has been claimed that "the'Humboldtian' university became a model for the rest of Europe with its central principle being the union of teaching and research in the work of the individual scholar or scientist."
In addition to the strong anchoring of traditional subjects, such as science, philosophy, history and medicine, the university developed to encompass numerous new scientific disciplines. Alexander von Humboldt, brother of the founder William, promoted the new learning. With the construction of modern research facilities in the second half of the 19th Century teaching of the natural sciences began. Famous researchers, such as the chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann, the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, the mathematicians Ernst Eduard Kummer, Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass, the physicians Johannes Peter Müller, Albrecht von Graefe, Rudolf Virchow and Robert Koch, contributed to Berlin University's scientific fame. During this period of enlargement, the university expanded to incorporate other separate colleges in Berlin. An example would be the Pépinière and the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum. In 1717, King Friedrich I had built a quarantine house for Plague at the city gates, which in 1727 was rechristened by the "soldier king" Friedrich
University of Tartu
The University of Tartu is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia; the University of Tartu is the only classical university in the country and the biggest and most prestigious university in Estonia. It was established by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632. There are nearly 14,000 students at the university; the language of instruction in most curricula is Estonian, but there are some more notable exceptions that are taught in English, such as Semiotics, Applied Measurement Science, Computer Science, Information Technology Law and European Union – Russia Studies. The historical buildings of the university are included in the European Heritage Label list as "embodiment of the ideas of a university in the Age of Enlightenment"; the University of Tartu is a member of the Utrecht Network. The Academia Gustaviana in the Swedish province of Livonia was the second university founded in the Swedish Empire, following Uppsala University and preceding the Academy of Åbo.
A precursor to the academy had been a Jesuit grammar school Gymnasium Dorpatense, founded by Stefan Batory in 1583 and existing to 1601, when Tartu was under Polish–Lithuanian rule. The first students matriculated between 20–21 April 1632; the opening ceremony of Academia Dorpatensis took place on 15 October in the same year. The academy in Tartu functioned with Philosophy, Law and Medical Faculties enjoying the privileges of the University of Uppsala. On account of the Russian–Swedish war, the University of Tartu moved to Tallinn in 1656 and in 1665 it closed down. In the 17th century the future outstanding Swedish scholars Urban Hiärne, Olof Verelius, Arvid Moller and others studied at the university. Among the academic staff were Friedrich Menius, Professor of History and Georg Mancelius, Professor of Theology. With the reestablishment of the university in 1690 as the Academia Gustavo-Carolina, Tartu became a university town again. Academic staff of the new university included Sven Dimberg, Professor of Mathematics, Olaus Hermelin, Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry, Lars Micrander, Professor of Medicine and Michael Dau, Professor of Philosophy as well as Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry.
Just under a decade after being reconstituted, as a result of the coalition against Sweden and the Great Famine of 1695–1697, the university moved from Tartu to Pärnu. Academia Gustavo-Carolina, which had opened in Pärnu on 28 August 1699, was closed as a result of the surrender of Pärnu to Russian forces on 12 August 1710 during the Great Northern War. According to the terms of the capitulation, the Russians agreed to maintain the university in Pärnu. However, the university was only reopened in 1802 by the Baltic German Ritterschaften, when the new German-speaking University was re-launched and had its new charter confirmed by the reform-minded Tsar Alexander I of Russia; the university was re-opened by the Baltic Germans in Estonia in April 1802. The language of instruction at Dorpat was German from 1802 to 1893. During that time, Dorpat had a dual nature in that it belonged both to the set of German and Russian universities. Financially and administratively, the latter was more important.
Among the 30 German-language universities, of which 23 were inside the German Empire, Dorpat was the 11th in size. In teaching, the university educated the local Baltic German leadership and professional classes as well as staff for the administration and health system of the entire Russian Empire. In scholarship, it was an international university; the freedom to be a half-German university ceased with the rise of nationalist tendencies in Russia, which held homogenization more important than retaining a bi-lingual university. Between 1882 and 1898, Russification in language, etc. was imposed, with some exceptions. By 1898, when both the town and the university were renamed Yuryev all distinguished scholars from Germany had left; the University of Yuryev existed until 1918, when during part of the fall term, it was reopened, under German occupation, as Dorpat. Russian academic staff and students took refuge in Voronezh in Russia, giving rise to the foundation of Voronezh State University, which traces its own history back to the foundation of the University of Tartu and still holds several physical properties of the latter.
Since Estonia became independent in 1918, the University of Tartu has been an Estonian-language institution since 1919. The university was named Ostland-Universität in Dorpat during the German occupation of Estonia in 1941–1944 and Tartu State University in 1940–1941 and 1944–1989, during the Soviet occupation. During Soviet rule, although Estonian remained the principal language of instruction, some courses were taught in Russian, there were several Russian curricula. Estonia regained independence in
Cell division
Cell division is the process by which a parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells. Cell division occurs as part of a larger cell cycle. In eukaryotes, there are two distinct types of cell division: a vegetative division, whereby each daughter cell is genetically identical to the parent cell, a reproductive cell division, whereby the number of chromosomes in the daughter cells is reduced by half to produce haploid gametes. Meiosis results in four haploid daughter cells by undergoing one round of DNA replication followed by two divisions. Homologous chromosomes are separated in the first division, sister chromatids are separated in the second division. Both of these cell division cycles are used in the process of sexual reproduction at some point in their life cycle. Both are believed to be present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor. Prokaryotes undergo a vegetative cell division known as binary fission, where their genetic material is segregated into two daughter cells. All cell divisions, regardless of organism, are preceded by a single round of DNA replication.
For simple unicellular microorganisms such as the amoeba, one cell division is equivalent to reproduction – an entire new organism is created. On a larger scale, mitotic cell division can create progeny from multicellular organisms, such as plants that grow from cuttings. Mitotic cell division enables sexually reproducing organisms to develop from the one-celled zygote, which itself was produced by meiotic cell division from gametes. After growth, cell division by mitosis allows for continual repair of the organism; the human body experiences about 10 quadrillion cell divisions in a lifetime. The primary concern of cell division is the maintenance of the original cell's genome. Before division can occur, the genomic information, stored in chromosomes must be replicated, the duplicated genome must be separated cleanly between cells. A great deal of cellular infrastructure is involved in keeping genomic information consistent between generations. Interphase is the process a cell must go through before mitosis and cytokinesis.
Interphase consists of three main stages: G1, S, G2. G1 is a time of growth for the cell where specialized cellular functions occur in order to prepare the cell for DNA Replication. There are checkpoints during interphase that allow the cell to be either progressed or denied further development. In S phase, the chromosomes are replicated in order for the genetic content to be maintained. During G2, the cell undergoes the final stages of growth before it enters the M phase, where spindles are synthesized; the M phase, can be either meiosis depending on the type of cell. Germ cells, or gametes, undergo meiosis. After the cell proceeds through the M phase, it may undergo cell division through cytokinesis; the control of each checkpoint is controlled by cyclin and cyclin dependent kinases. The progression of interphase is the result of the increased amount of cyclin; as the amount of cyclin increases and more cyclin dependent kinases attach to cyclin signaling the cell further into interphase. The peak of the cyclin attached to the cyclin dependent kinases this system pushes the cell out of interphase and into the M phase, where mitosis and cytokinesis occur.
There are three transition checkpoints. The most important being the G1-S transition checkpoint. If the cell does not pass this phase the cell will most not go through the rest of the cell division cycle. Prophase is the first stage of division; the nuclear envelope is broken down, long strands of chromatin condense to form shorter more visible strands called chromosomes, the nucleolus disappears, microtubules attach to the chromosomes at the kinetochores present in the centromere. Microtubules associated with the alignment and separation of chromosomes are referred to as the spindle and spindle fibers. Chromosomes will be visible under a microscope and will be connected at the centromere. During this condensation and alignment period, homologous over. In metaphase, the centromeres of the chromosomes convene themselves on the metaphase plate, an imaginary line, equidistant from the two centrosome poles. Chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell by MTOCs by pushing and pulling on centromeres of both chromatids which causes the chromosome to move to the center.
The chromosomes are still condensing and are at one step away from being the most coiled and condensed they will be. Spindle fibres have connected to the kinetochores. At this point, the chromosomes are ready to split into opposite poles of the cell towards the spindle to which they are connected. Anaphase is a short stage of the cell cycle and occurs after the chromosomes align at the mitotic plate. After the chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell, the spindle fibers will pull them apart; the chromosomes are split apart as the sister chromatids move to opposite sides of the cell. While the sister chromatids are being pulled apart and plasma gets elongated from non-kinetochore microtubules Telophase is the last stage of the cell cycle. A cleavage furrow splits the cell in two; these two cells form around the chromatin at the two poles of the cell. Two nuclear membranes begin to reform and the chromatin begin to unwind. Cells are broadly classified into two main categories: simple, non-nucleated prokaryotic cells, complex, nucleated eukaryotic cells.
Owing to their structural differences and prokaryotic cells do not divide in the same way. The pattern of cell division that tr
Integrated Authority File
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used for documentation in libraries and also by archives and museums; the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero licence; the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format; the Integrated Authority File became operational in April 2012 and integrates the content of the following authority files, which have since been discontinued: Name Authority File Corporate Bodies Authority File Subject Headings Authority File Uniform Title File of the Deutsches Musikarchiv At the time of its introduction on 5 April 2012, the GND held 9,493,860 files, including 2,650,000 personalised names.
There are seven main types of GND entities: LIBRIS Virtual International Authority File Information pages about the GND from the German National Library Search via OGND Bereitstellung des ersten GND-Grundbestandes DNB, 19 April 2012 From Authority Control to Linked Authority Data Presentation given by Reinhold Heuvelmann to the ALA MARC Formats Interest Group, June 2012
National Library of Latvia
The National Library of Latvia known as Castle of Light is a national cultural institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture of Latvia. The National Library of Latvia was formed in 1919 after the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed in 1918; the first supervisor of the Library was Jānis Misiņš, a librarian and the founder of the Latvian scientific bibliography. Today the Library plays an important role in the development of Latvia's information society, providing Internet access to residents and supporting research and lifelong education; the National Library was founded on 29 August 1919, one year after independence, as the State Library. Its first chief librarian and bibliographer was Jānis Misiņš who made his immense private collection the basis of the new library. Within a year, until 1920, the stocks had grown to 250,000 volumes. Starting in the same year, all publishers were obliged to hand in a deposit copy of their works. Since 1927, the Library has published the National Bibliography of Latvia.
There were significant additions in 1939 and 1940, when the State Library took over many of the libraries and collections of the Baltic Germans, most of whom resettled to the Reich. Among these was a large part of the collection of the Society for History and Archaeology of Russia's Baltic Provinces, est. 1834, the primary historical society of the Baltic Germans. In 1940, holdings encompassed 1.7 million volumes, so that they had to be stored in two different locations in the Old Town. During the German occupation of Riga, the State Library was renamed Country Library, eliminating reference to a sovereign Latvian state). Under Soviet rule, it was known as State Library of the Latvian SSR. According to Soviet customs, in 1966 it received an honorary name, commemorating Vilis Lācis, a writer and the late prime minister of Soviet Latvia. From 1946, literature deemed'dangerous' from the Soviet perspective was withdrawn from the shelves and could be accessed only with a special permit until 1988.
In 1956, the State Library moved into its new building at Krišjāņa Barona iela. Since the reestablishment of national independence 1991, the institution has been called National Library of Latvia. In 1995, it received as a permanent loan the Baltic Central Library of Otto Bong, a collection pertaining to the history, regional studies and languages of the Baltic countries. In 2006, the National Library joined the European Library online service; the Library's holdings today encompass more than 5 million titles, incl. about 18,000 manuscripts from the 14th century up to modern times. One of the characteristic cornerstones of the NLL, which characterizes every national library, is the formation of the collection of national literature, its eternal storage and long-term access; the NLL is a centre of theoretical research and practical analyses of the activities of Latvian libraries. The Library carries out the functions of the centre of Latvia Interlibrary Loan, ensures the library and information service to the Parliament of the Republic of Latvia – the Saeima, implements the standardisation of the branch.
Since the outset, its main concern has been the national bibliography. The massive union catalogue Seniespiedumi latviešu valodā received the Spīdola Prize in 2000 and was awarded The Beautiful Book of the Year 99. In 2005, the Letonikas grāmatu autoru rādītājs was published, providing information about versatile branches of science and representatives of various nations, Latvia being the main focus of their publications; the NLL includes several collections of posters. Digitising collections at the NLL started in 1999. At present the Latvian National Digital Library Letonica, formed in 2006, holds digitized collections of newspapers, maps, sheet-music and audio recordings. In 2008 NLL launched two major digital projects. Periodika.lv is the NLL's collection of digitized historical periodicals in Latvian with the possibility to read full texts and search page by page. Latvia has Dance Festivals organized every four years; the historical materials from the first Song Festival in 1864 till the Latgale Song Festival in 1940 can be explored in another digital collection of the National Library of Latvia.
The first discussions about the need for a new National Library had started in 1928, the significance of the project of this century was further confirmed by the high-level international recognition. In 1999 all 170 UNESCO member states during its General Conference adopted a resolution, calling the member states and the international community to ensure all possible support for the implementation of the NLL project; the continuous growth of the Library had made it necessary to transfer parts of the stocks into other buildings. Thus, in 2013, NLL was distributed between five locations in Riga. Furthermore, some stocks were being stored since 1998 in a depot in Silakrogs outside the capital; these inconveniences convinced the Parliament to approve a new building on the left bank of the Daugava. On 15 May 2008, after discussions lasting for many years, the state agency Three New Brothers and the Union of National Construction Companies signed the contract on the construction of the new National Library of Latvia.
On 18 May 2014, the main facility of the Library at Krišjāņa Barona iela was close
Cell nucleus
In cell biology, the nucleus is a membrane-bound organelle found in eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotes have a single nucleus, but a few cell types, such as mammalian red blood cells, have no nuclei, a few others including osteoclasts have many; the cell nucleus contains all of the cell's genome, except for a small fraction of mitochondrial DNA, organized as multiple long linear DNA molecules in a complex with a large variety of proteins, such as histones, to form chromosomes. The genes within these chromosomes are structured in such a way to promote cell function; the nucleus maintains the integrity of genes and controls the activities of the cell by regulating gene expression—the nucleus is, the control center of the cell. The main structures making up the nucleus are the nuclear envelope, a double membrane that encloses the entire organelle and isolates its contents from the cellular cytoplasm, the nuclear matrix, a network within the nucleus that adds mechanical support, much like the cytoskeleton, which supports the cell as a whole.
Because the nuclear envelope is impermeable to large molecules, nuclear pores are required to regulate nuclear transport of molecules across the envelope. The pores cross both nuclear membranes, providing a channel through which larger molecules must be transported by carrier proteins while allowing free movement of small molecules and ions. Movement of large molecules such as proteins and RNA through the pores is required for both gene expression and the maintenance of chromosomes. Although the interior of the nucleus does not contain any membrane-bound subcompartments, its contents are not uniform, a number of nuclear bodies exist, made up of unique proteins, RNA molecules, particular parts of the chromosomes; the best-known of these is the nucleolus, involved in the assembly of ribosomes. After being produced in the nucleolus, ribosomes are exported to the cytoplasm where they translate mRNA; the nucleus was the first organelle to be discovered. What is most the oldest preserved drawing dates back to the early microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
He observed the nucleus, in the red blood cells of salmon. Unlike mammalian red blood cells, those of other vertebrates still contain nuclei; the nucleus was described by Franz Bauer in 1804 and in more detail in 1831 by Scottish botanist Robert Brown in a talk at the Linnean Society of London. Brown was studying orchids under the microscope when he observed an opaque area, which he called the "areola" or "nucleus", in the cells of the flower's outer layer, he did not suggest a potential function. In 1838, Matthias Schleiden proposed that the nucleus plays a role in generating cells, thus he introduced the name "cytoblast", he believed that he had observed new cells assembling around "cytoblasts". Franz Meyen was a strong opponent of this view, having described cells multiplying by division and believing that many cells would have no nuclei; the idea that cells can be generated de novo, by the "cytoblast" or otherwise, contradicted work by Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow who decisively propagated the new paradigm that cells are generated by cells.
The function of the nucleus remained unclear. Between 1877 and 1878, Oscar Hertwig published several studies on the fertilization of sea urchin eggs, showing that the nucleus of the sperm enters the oocyte and fuses with its nucleus; this was the first time. This was in contradiction to Ernst Haeckel's theory that the complete phylogeny of a species would be repeated during embryonic development, including generation of the first nucleated cell from a "monerula", a structureless mass of primordial mucus. Therefore, the necessity of the sperm nucleus for fertilization was discussed for quite some time. However, Hertwig confirmed his observation in other animal groups, including amphibians and molluscs. Eduard Strasburger produced the same results for plants in 1884; this paved the way to assign the nucleus an important role in heredity. In 1873, August Weismann postulated the equivalence of the maternal and paternal germ cells for heredity; the function of the nucleus as carrier of genetic information became clear only after mitosis was discovered and the Mendelian rules were rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century.
The nucleus is the largest organelle in animal cells. In mammalian cells, the average diameter of the nucleus is 6 micrometres, which occupies about 10% of the total cell volume; the contents of the nucleus are held in the nucleoplasm similar to the cytoplasm in the rest of the cell. The fluid component of this is termed the nucleosol, similar to the cytosol in the cytoplasm. In most types of granulocyte, a white blood cell, the nucleus is lobated and can be bi-lobed, tri-lobed or multi-lobed; the nuclear envelope, otherwise known as nuclear membrane, consists of two cellular membranes, an inner and an outer membrane, arranged parallel to one another and separated by 10 to 50 nanometres. The nuclear envelope encloses the nucleus and separates the cell's genetic material from the surrounding cytoplasm, serving as a barrier to prevent macromolecules from diffusing between the nucleoplasm and the cytoplasm; the outer nuclear membrane is continuous with the membrane of the rough endoplasmic reticulum, is studded with ribosomes.
The space between the membranes is called the perinuclear space and is continuous with the RER lumen. Nuclear pores, which provide aqueous cha
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, was an English naturalist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now accepted, considered a foundational concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations, it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.
Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science, his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations, in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority, he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.
Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. In 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, his research on plants was published in a series of books, in his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Since 2008, a statue of Charles Darwin occupies the place of honour at London's Natural History Museum. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his family's home, The Mount, he was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. His grandfathers Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both prominent abolitionists.
Both families were Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, himself a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother; the eight-year-old Charles had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder. Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies, he learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest.
In Darwin's second year at the university he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged orthodox religious concepts of science. He assisted Robert Edmond Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, on 27 March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grant's audacity, but had read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus' journals. Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jameson's natural-history course, which covered geology—including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism, he learned the classification of plants, assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time. Darwin's neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican country parson.
As Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He preferred shooting to studying, his cousin William Darwin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting.
. Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
