On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin that is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology; it was published on 24 November 1859. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection although Lamarckism was also included as a mechanism of lesser importance. The book presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. The opening sentences demonstrate that Darwin did not see the role of natural selection in species conformity or what is now called stabilizing selection. This was not corrected in editions subsequent to Darwin reading the correct explanation In Patrick Matthew's book in 1860 which had been published in 1831.

Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream. (Full article...)

The iconic frontispiece to Johannes Kepler's 1627 Rudolphine Tables pays tribute to earlier great astronomers, including Copernicus, Ptolemy and most prominently Tycho Brahe. It was used in 2005 as the emblem for the joint meeting of the History of Science Society and the Society for the History of Technology.

...that the word scientist was coined in 1833 by philosopher and historian of science William Whewell?

...that biogeography has its roots in investigations of the story of Noah's Ark?

...that the idea of the "Scientific Revolution" dates only to 1939, with the work of Alexandre Koyré?

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a non-Spanish European scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). (Full article...)

April 19:

• 1567 - Death of Michael Stifel, German mathematician (b. 1487)

• 1739 - Death of Nicholas Saunderson, English mathematician

• 1770 - Captain James Cook sights Australia

• 1831 - Death of Johann Gottlieb Friedrich von Bohnenberger, German mathematician (b. 1765)

• 1854 - Death of Robert Jameson, Scottish naturalist (b. 1774)

• 1874 - Birth of Ernst Rüdin, Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist, and eugenicist (d. 1952)

• 1882 - Death of Charles Darwin, English biologist (b. 1809)

• 1883 - Birth of Richard von Mises, Austrian-born mathematician (d. 1953)

• 1892 - Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts

• 1906 - Death of Pierre Curie, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859)

• 1912 - Birth of Glenn Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)

• 1914 - Death of Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher and mathematician (b. 1839)

• 2004 - Death of John Maynard Smith, English biologist (b. 1920)