Editing Leonard Darwin

{{short description|Son of Charles Darwin (1850–1943)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=June 2018}}
{{Refimprove|date=July 2019}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Leonard Darwin
| image              = Leonard Darwin.jpg
| caption            = Leonard Darwin in April 1916
| birth_name         = 
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1850|01|15|df=y}}
| birth_place        = [[Down House]], [[Kent]], England
| death_date         = {{Death date and age|1943|03|26|1850|01|15|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Forest Row]], England
| resting_place      = 
| spouse             = 
| children           = 
| parents            = [[Charles Darwin]]<br />[[Emma Darwin|Emma Wedgwood]]
| relatives          = [[Darwin–Wedgwood family]]
}}
{{Eugenics sidebar|pre-war academics}}

'''Leonard Darwin''' {{postnom|FRGS}} (15 January 1850 – 26 March 1943) was an English politician, economist and [[eugenics|eugenicist]]. He was a son of the naturalist [[Charles Darwin]], and also a mentor to [[Ronald Fisher]], a statistician and evolutionary biologist.

==Biography==
Leonard Darwin was born in 1850 at [[Down House]], [[Kent]], into the wealthy [[Darwin–Wedgwood family]]. He was the fourth son and eighth child of the naturalist [[Charles Darwin]] and his wife [[Emma Darwin|Emma Wedgwood]], and the last of Darwin's immediate offspring to die. He considered himself the least intelligent of their children – brothers [[Frank Darwin|Frank]], [[George Darwin|George]] and [[Horace Darwin|Horace]] were all elected [[Fellow of the Royal Society|Fellows of the Royal Society]]. He was sent to Clapham School in 1862.

Darwin joined the [[Royal Engineers]] in 1871.<ref name=Berra2019>{{Cite journal |last=Berra |first=Tim M. |title=Commentary: Who was Leonard Darwin?|journal=International Journal of Epidemiology |year=2019 |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=362–365 |language=en |doi=10.1093/ije/dyx241|pmid=29140507 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Between 1877 and 1882 he worked for the Intelligence Division of the [[War Office|Ministry of War]]. He went on several scientific expeditions, including those to observe the [[Transit of Venus]] in 1874 and 1882.

In 1890, Darwin was promoted to the rank of major, but soon left the army and from 1892 to 1895 was a [[Liberal Unionist]] Member of Parliament (MP) for [[Lichfield (UK Parliament constituency)|Lichfield constituency]] in [[Staffordshire]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Mr Leonard Darwin, former MP, Lichfield |url=https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/14925/leonard_darwin/lichfield |website=[[TheyWorkForYou]] |access-date=15 May 2020 |language=en}}</ref> where his grandfather, [[Josiah Wedgwood II]], had also been an MP. He wrote vigorously on the economic issues of the day: [[bimetallism]], [[History of the rupee|Indian currency reform]] and municipal trade.

Darwin married Elizabeth Frances Fraser on {{nowr|11 July 1882}}. She died 16 years later, on {{nowr|13 January 1898}}. On {{nowr|29 November 1900}}, he married his second cousin, Charlotte Mildred Massingberd, granddaughter of Charlotte Wedgwood, his mother's sister. Their shared ancestor was [[Josiah Wedgwood II]]. His wife Charlotte's paternal grandfather married his paternal aunt, after her grandmother Charlotte's death. Since Leonard's parents were cousins, Charlotte was also a second cousin on his father's side. Leonard had no children from either marriage.

He was president of the [[Royal Geographical Society]] from 1908 to 1911 and chairman of the [[British Eugenics Society]] from 1911 to 1928 – succeeding his half-cousin once removed [[Francis Galton]]. He became the society's honorary president in 1928. In 1912 the [[University of Cambridge]] conferred on him an honorary doctorate of science.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Arden-Close |first1=C. F. |last2=Mill |first2=Hugh Robert |title=Major Leonard Darwin |journal=[[The Geographical Journal]] |date=1943 |volume=101 |issue=4 |pages=172–177 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1789678|jstor=1789678}}</ref>

Darwin played an important part in the life of the geneticist and statistician [[Ronald Fisher]], supporting him intellectually, morally and sometimes financially. Fisher, replying to Darwin's congratulations on his election to the Royal Society, replied on {{nowr|25 February 1929}}, "I knew you would be glad, and your pleasure is as good to me almost as though my own father were still living."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Box |first1=Joan Fisher |last2=Fisher |first2=Sir Ronald Aylmer |title=R. A. Fisher, the Life of a Scientist |date=1978 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-471-09300-8 |page=237 |language=en}}</ref>

Some years before, Fisher had resigned from the [[Royal Statistical Society]] after a disagreement. Darwin regretted this and engineered Fisher's re-entry by making him a gift of a life-time subscription. Fisher's 1930 book ''[[The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection]]'' is dedicated to Darwin. After Darwin's death in 1943 at the age of 93, Fisher wrote to Darwin's niece, Margaret Keynes, "My very dear friend Leonard Darwin... was surely the kindest and wisest man I ever knew."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berra |first1=Tim M. |title=Darwin and His Children: His Other Legacy |date=26 September 2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-930944-3 |page=152 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N3BOTPYzFkEC&pg=PA152 |language=en}}</ref>

Darwin retired to Cripps Corner at [[Forest Row]], [[East Sussex]] in 1921, with his second wife Charlotte Mildred Massingberd (died 1940), and lived there until his death in 1943.<ref name=Berra2019/> He and Charlotte were buried at Forest Row Cemetery. Leonard Darwin was the last surviving child of Charles Darwin.

==In popular culture==
Darwin was portrayed by Derek Ensor in the 1985 Central Television serial ''[[The Last Place on Earth]]'', in his capacity as President of the RGS at the beginning of the [[Terra Nova Expedition]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088551/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm |title=The Last Place on Earth - Full cast and crew |author= |date= |work=IMDb |access-date=26 April 2025}}</ref>

==Publications==
{{wikisource}}
*{{Cite book |last=Darwin |first=L. |display-authors=0 |date=1926 |title=The Need for Eugenic Reform |url=https://archive.org/details/needforeugenicre00darw |location=London |publisher=Murray}}
*{{Cite book |last=Darwin |first=L. |display-authors=0 |date=1928 |title=What is Eugenics |location=London |publisher=Watts & Co.}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
*[https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/54078A. W. F. Edwards: "Darwin, Leonard", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford, UK:Oxford University Press), 2004]. Pay-walled
*Leonard Darwin, ''Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society'', 04/01/1944, Vol. 104 (2), pp. 89–90
*{{cite journal |last1=Serpente |first1=Norberto |title=More than a Mentor: Leonard Darwin’s Contribution to the Assimilation of Mendelism into Eugenics and Darwinism |journal=Journal of the History of Biology |date=August 2016 |volume=49 |issue=3 |pages=461–494 |doi=10.1007/s10739-015-9423-6}}
*R. A. Fisher, J. H. Bennet and L. Darwin, ''Natural Selection, Heredity and Eugenics: Including Selected Correspondence of R. A. Fisher with Leonard Darwin and Others'' (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press), 1983
*Leonard Darwin, ''The Need for Eugenic Reform'' (London, UK: John Murray), 1926

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
*{{Find a Grave|103240944}}
*{{Internet Archive author|sname=Leonard Darwin|sopt=t}}

{{RGSPresidents|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Darwin, Leonard}}
[[Category:1850 births]]
[[Category:1943 deaths]]
[[Category:Darwin–Wedgwood family]]
[[Category:English eugenicists]]
[[Category:Liberal Unionist Party MPs for English constituencies]]
[[Category:People from Downe]]
[[Category:Presidents of the Royal Geographical Society]]
[[Category:Royal Engineers officers]]
[[Category:UK MPs 1892–1895]]
[[Category:People from Forest Row]]
[[Category:Military personnel from the London Borough of Bromley]]
[[Category:19th-century British Army personnel]]
[[Category:Burials in East Sussex]]