Horace Darwin

Who was Horace Darwin?

Sir Horace Darwin, KBE, FRS, a son of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, was a civil engineer.

Darwin was born in Down House in 1851, the fifth son and ninth child of the British naturalist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, the youngest of their seven children that survived to adulthood.

He was educated at a private school in Woodbridge, Suffolk and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1874. He founded the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company in 1885 and was Mayor of Cambridge between 1896 and 1897. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903. He was knighted in 1918.

Darwin married Emma Cecilia "Ida" Farrer, daughter of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer in January 1880, later Lady Ida Darwin and they had one son and two daughters:

⁕Erasmus Darwin IV who was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres during the First World War.

⁕Ruth Frances Darwin, married Dr William Rees-Thomas, was a notable advocate of eugenics.

⁕Emma Nora Darwin edited the 1959 edition of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and married the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow.

His family home, "the Orchard", in Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, is now the site of Murray Edwards College.