Progress in genetics today would not have been possible without Darwin's revolution, but the mysterious man who determined belief in God's creation was remarkably timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion, a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, faring the controversy his theories might unleash. In this book, the author unravels Darwin's life and contribution to biology in a brilliant and lucid manner, and traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required. In this way, he provides an unusually clear historical perspective on the progress from pre-Darwinian biology to modern genetics and the crucial discovery of chromosomes.