Charles Darwin's study showing a bench in the window with Darwin's microscope. Down House in Downe, Kent, is where Charles Darwin worked for 40 years and died in 1882. This photograph is from 1932. Darwin (1809-1882) was an English naturalist and geologist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.