Charles Darwin stole Scot’s work on evolution, says criminologist | Scotland

A criminologist says he has found evidence to back claims that Charles Darwin stole his revolutionary theory of evolution from a Scottish naturalist.

Dr Mike Sutton says his research shows “overwhelming” similarities between On the Origin of Species and an earlier work by Perthshire-raised Patrick Matthew.

Darwin revolutionised understanding of the natural world, explaining that, rather than being the result of divine creation, life developed from a common ancestor by gradual evolution.

In 1859, having observed such creatures as the giant Galapagos tortoise, he published his book, spelling out the theory of a “process of natural selection”. But 28 years earlier Matthew had published On Naval Timber And Arboriculture, which expounded similar findings through his theory of the “Natural Process of Selection”.

Sutton, whose