Cathedral at Conception, Chile, ruined in 1835 earthquake that shook Darwin deep.

This is the tenth installment of an abridged version of my book Reef Madness: Alexander Agassiz, Charles Darwin, and the Meaning of Coral.  (Earlier installments are listed at bottom.) Here a quake in Chile rearranges Darwin’s thinking about the earth — and lays the foundation for his coral reef theory.

© David Dobbs, 2011. All rights reserved.

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Darwin found geology in the Andes so enthralling, he wrote his sister, that he “could hardly sleep at night for thinking over my days work.” Through much of 1834 an...