Erasmus Darwin, English physician and naturalist, 1795.

Erasmus Darwin, English physician and naturalist, 1795. Darwin (1731-1802) practiced medicine at Lichfield for 20 years from 1757. In his Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796), he put forward a formal theory of evolution. He was the grandfather of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, and was a member of the Lunar Society, a dining club of intellectuals, scientists and businessmen from the Birmingham region, including Matthew Boulton, James Watt, John Wilkinson, Joseph Priestley, Richard Edgeworth and Josiah Wedgwood. From The European Magazine. (London, 1795). (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)