Q 01/05

In which town was Darwin born in 1809?

A) Shrewsbury

B) Chester

C) Lichfield

D) Worcester

Answer · why

A) Shrewsbury

The family home, The Mount, sat in Shropshire; his father Robert was a wealthy society doctor and financier.

Q 02/05

Both of Darwin's grandfathers were prominent campaigners for what?

A) Parliamentary reform

B) Free trade

C) Abolition of slavery

D) Catholic emancipation

Answer · why

C) Abolition of slavery

The family's anti-slavery convictions stayed with Darwin, who argued bitterly about slavery with his captain in Brazil.

Q 03/05

Darwin's grandfather Erasmus anticipated ideas of evolution and common descent in which 1794 work?

A) Systema Naturae

B) Zoonomia

C) Philosophie Zoologique

D) The Temple of Nature

Answer · why

B) Zoonomia

It was a poetic fantasy of gradual creation whose undeveloped ideas his grandson would later expand.

Q 04/05

Darwin first went to university to study medicine. Where?

A) Glasgow

B) Oxford

C) London

D) Edinburgh

Answer · why

D) Edinburgh

He found the lectures dull and surgery distressing, and neglected his studies for marine invertebrates.

Q 05/05

As a medical student Darwin took taxidermy lessons from John Edmonstone, a freed slave from which region?

A) Jamaica

B) Barbados

C) Sierra Leone

D) Demerara

Answer · why

D) Demerara

Around 40 hour-long sessions with 'a very pleasant and intelligent man' reinforced Darwin's lifelong opposition to slavery.