House of Fleeming Jenkin

 Biology, History of Science, Natural History  2 Responses »
Apr 192016
 

3 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh EH3 6AP

Fleeming Jenkin's house

Fleeming Jenkin was appointed by Queen Victoria as the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He is now best known for raising an important objection to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 Jenkin argued that any favourable mutation that arose in one individual of a species would  be rapidly swamped by interbreeding with a large population of normal individuals. This argument depended on the belief that characteristics of parents  were simply ‘blended’ in the offspring. The rise of modern genetics, which invalidated the ‘blending’ model of inheritance, eventually resolved this problem, but it presented a serious problem for Darwin’s theory at the time.

No public access.

Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).

Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).

 

 

Charles Darwin’s lodgings

 Biology, History of Science, Natural History  No Responses »
Apr 172016
 

11 Lothian Street, Edinburgh EH1 1HE

Charles Darwin's lodgings

It was here that Charles Darwin lodged in the house of Mrs Mackay when a medical student in Edinburgh in 1825-27. He was not an enthusiastic student and left without finishing his degree. In Edinburgh he met Robert Edmond Grant, a lecturer in John Barclay’s anatomy school and an enthusiastic advocate of evolution. On one of their regular zoological collecting trips together Grant apparently ‘burst forth in admiration’ of  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s evolutionary theories. Darwin later claimed, perhaps disingenuously, that he had listened to Grant ‘as far as I can judge, without any effect on my mind’.

No public access. The original building no longer survives.

Charles Darwin (1809–82).

Charles Darwin (1809–82).

Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874).

Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874).

Plaque marking the site of Darwin's lodgings.

Plaque marking the site of Darwin’s lodgings.

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