Darwin Reads Malthus's Essay on Population
September 28, 1838 · 19th Century
On September 28, 1838, Charles Darwin read Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population at his London lodgings. Malthus's argument that populations grow faster than food supply, producing a constant struggle for survival, gave Darwin the mechanism he had been seeking. In his Notebook D, Darwin recorded how favorable variations would be preserved and unfavorable ones destroyed under competitive pressure, catalyzing the theory of natural selection.
Key Figures
Charles DarwinThomas Malthus
Locations
36 Great Marlborough Street, London
Topics
evolutionnatural selectionpopulation theoryVictorian sciencebiology
Connected Events — 7 Connections
Darwin's natural selection theory lacked a mechanism for heredity, which Mendel's genetics later provided Mendel Publishes His Paper on Genetics
Both Marx and Darwin drew on Malthusian population theory, applying it to different domains of human struggle Publication of The Communist Manifesto
Vavilov built on Darwinian variation theory to explain geographic patterns of crop diversity Vavilov Maps the Centers of Crop Plant Origin
Burgess Shale provided physical evidence of the explosive diversification Darwin's theory predicted Burgess Shale Fossils Discovered by Walcott
Darwin read Malthus population essay and directly extracted the mechanism of natural selection from Malthus struggle-for-survival argument Principle of Population Published
Lyell's uniformitarianism prepared Darwin to think in terms of gradual natural processes operating over long periods Charles Lyell Publishes Principles of Geology (First Volume)
Humboldt's published works directly influenced Darwin, who cited his Personal Narrative as inspiration for the Beagle voyage Alexander von Humboldt's South American Expedition
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