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Leonard Darwin (15 January 1850 – 26 March 1943) was an English politician, economist and eugenics. He was a son of the naturalist Charles Darwin, and also a mentor to Ronald Fisher, a statistician and evolutionary biologist.
Darwin joined the Royal Engineers in 1871. Between 1877 and 1882 he worked for the Intelligence Division of the War Office. 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 constituency in Staffordshire, where his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood II, had also been an MP. He wrote vigorously on the economic issues of the day: bimetallism, Indian currency reform and municipal trade.
Darwin married Elizabeth Frances Fraser on . She died 16 years later, on . On , 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.
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 , "I knew you would be glad, and your pleasure is as good to me almost as though my own father were still living." (1978). 9780471093008, Wiley. ISBN 9780471093008
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."
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. 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.
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Categories: 1850 Births, 1943 Deaths, Darwin–wedgwood Family, English Eugenicists, Liberal Unionist Party Mps For English Constituencies, People From Downe, Presidents Of The Royal Geographical Society, Royal Engineers Officers, Uk Mps 1892–1895, People From Forest Row, Military Personnel From The London Borough Of Bromley, 19th-century British Army Personnel, Burials In East Sussex
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