Robert Edmond Grant

Grant was a close friend and correspondent of Geoffroy, whom he’d met in France. Darwin met Grant while he was studying medicine in Edinburgh, becoming an enthusiastic student of the free-thinking biologist/anatomist. Grant took him to a talk by Audubon, whose wife had known Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, but there is no record of a direct personal connection. Darwin’s close friendship with Grant ended when Grant felt that his student’s discoveries threatened his own. It seems likely that Grant as a student in Paris met Lamarck, whose ideas he keenly espoused, but it is unclear. Faraday advised Grant on public speaking.