Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist^[I] who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors,^[1][2] through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and much of the general public in his lifetime,^[3] but it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.^[4] In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.^[5][6]