41 Successful People Who Failed Miserably Before Making It Big

Charles Darwin, the father of evolution.

15. Charles Darwin’s Father Considered Him a Failure

Charles Darwin enrolled at the University of Edinburgh as a teenager to study medicine, but he dropped out. The next year, he enrolled at Cambridge University, but he dropped out of there, as well. His father referred to him as an “idle gentleman,” meaning that he wasted his time on frivolous pursuits, namely his love of the natural world.

Darwin’s niche wasn’t to be in medicine but in following his passion for nature. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and influential scientific minds in history. This was despite, to quote his autobiography, “I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.”