Biography
Darwin was born in Lichfield, the son of Erasmus Darwin and his first wife Mary Howard. He was named after his uncle, Robert Waring Darwin of Elston (1724–1816), a bachelor. His mother died in 1770 and Mary Parker, the governess hired to look after him, became his father's mistress and bore Erasmus two illegitimate daughters.
In 1783 Darwin began his studies of medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he apparently took lodgings with the chemistry professor Joseph Black. His father then sent him to the Leiden University in the Netherlands for a few months, and he took his MD there on 26 February 1785. His Leyden dissertation was impressive and was published in the Philosophical Transactions, but his father may have assisted him in this. In Edinburgh Robert Darwin had studied under several leading scholars, including John Walker. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 21 February 1788.
Read more about this topic: Robert Darwin
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