In 1795, Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, asked:

** Erasmus Darwin ( 1731 – 1802 ), physician and biologist, grandfather of Charles Darwin ( 1809 – 1882 )

** Erasmus Alvey Darwin ( 1804 – 1881 ), brother of Charles Darwin ( 1809 – 1882 )

** William Erasmus Darwin ( 1839 – 1914 ), eldest son of Charles Darwin ( 1809 – 1882 )

Erasmus Darwin ( 12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802 ) was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King.

Erasmus Darwin House, his home in Lichfield, is now a museum dedicated to Erasmus Darwin and his life's work.

A school in nearby Chasetown recently converted to Academy status and is now known as Erasmus Darwin Academy.

Stone-cast bust of Erasmus Darwin, by W. J.

* Erasmus Darwin II ( 1759 – 1799 )

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Erasmus attributed the origins of this Latin parable to Diogenianus — piscem natare docem ( teach fish how to swim ).

' Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer and the origins of the evolutionary worldview in British provincial scientific culture ', Isis 94 ( 2003 ), 1 – 29

It has been claimed the origins of the movement emanate from the teachings of the Cambridge University professor and intellectual Desiderius Erasmus.

His origins are unknown ; his eloquence was praised in Erasmus ' letter to John Watson in 1516, the earliest surviving notice.

He was an active member of the Lunar Society often held at Erasmus Darwin House and is remembered on the Moonstones in Birmingham.

Despite this uncertainty, fourteen individuals have been identified as having verifiably attended Lunar Society meetings regularly over a long period during its most productive eras: these are Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Samuel Galton, Jr., James Keir, Joseph Priestley, William Small, Jonathan Stokes, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, John Whitehurst and William Withering.

Most significantly, Erasmus Darwin moved to Derby in 1781, but although he complained of being " cut off from the milk of science ", he continued to attend Lunar Society meetings at least until 1788.

In 1775 he was appointed physician to Birmingham General Hospital ( at the suggestion of Erasmus Darwin, a physician and founder member of the Lunar Society ), but in 1783 he diagnosed himself as having pulmonary tuberculosis and went twice to Portugal hoping the better winter climate would improve his health ; it didn't.

Small was Boulton's doctor and became a close friend of Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, James Keir, James Watt, Anna Seward and others connected with the Lunar Society.

By the second half of the century the town's leading thinkers – particularly members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham such as Joseph Priestley, James Keir, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, William Withering and Erasmus Darwin – had become widely-influential participants in the Republic of Letters, the free circulation of ideas and information among the developing pan-European and trans-Atlantic intellectual elite.

The Lunar Society included industrialists such as Samuel Galton, Jr. as well as intellectuals such as Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley ; scientific lecturers such as John Warltire and Adam Walker communicated basic Newtonian principles widely to the town's manufacturing classes ; and men such as Matthew Boulton, James Keir, James Watt and John Roebuck were simultaneously highly regarded both as scientists and as technologists, and in some cases also as businessmen.

The famous Lunar Society included Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood with Benjamin Franklin corresponding from America.

Further honours included election to the Institut de France in 1967, the Erasmus Prize in 1971, the award of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1975, the Sonning Award ( Denmark's highest musical honour ) in 1977, and the presentation of the Croix de Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown in 1980.

* Erasmus Darwin's Improved Design for Steering Carriages — And Cars, by Desmond King-Hele Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London © 2002 The Royal Society.

He ran a school founded on the progressive teaching methods of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and also served as Secretary of the Derby Philosophical Society, a scientific society which had been founded in the 1790s by Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles.

Spencer was educated in empirical science by his father, while the members of the Derby Philosophical Society introduced him to pre-Darwinian concepts of biological evolution, particularly those of Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

He wrote an entirely fictitious account of the Java upas tree, derived from an imaginary Dutch traveller, which imposed on Erasmus Darwin, and he hoaxed the Society of Antiquaries with the tombstone of Hardicanute, supposed to have been dug up in Kennington, but really engraved with an Anglo-Saxon inscription of his own invention.

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, started the Derby Philosophical Society when he moved to Derby in 1783.

* B & R Beurs Erasmus Investment Society

The Society was formed in 2002 by Frans Erasmus in Johannesburg.

However, medieval scholars, including Erasmus, thought the pattern of the fibres seen in a transverse section of the stipe resembled a double-headed eagle or oak tree.

He also derived great satisfaction from his friendships and correspondence with Erasmus and other scholars.

Matthew Boulton and Erasmus Darwin met some time between 1757 and 1758, possibly through family connections, as Boulton's mother's family were patients of Darwin ; or possibly though shared friendships, as both were admirers of the printer John Baskerville and friends of the astronomer and geologist John Michell, a regular visitor to Darwin's house in Lichfield.