Which naturalist published The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs in 1842?

Charles Darwin published The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs in 1842. It was Darwin’s first scientific monograph and the first part of his planned geology of the voyage of HMS Beagle.

Darwin developed his explanation of reef and atoll formation during the Beagle’s circumnavigation. He proposed that a volcanic island could slowly subside while coral continued growing upward in shallow water. A fringing reef could therefore become a barrier reef and eventually an atoll surrounding a lagoon.

The book drew on observations from places including Tahiti and the Keeling Islands, where Darwin and Captain Robert FitzRoy studied reef shapes, lagoons, waves, and the depth at which living coral could grow. Darwin published the work in May 1842, before On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859.

Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell were important Victorian scientists associated with Darwin, but neither published this monograph. Alfred Russel Wallace independently developed natural selection later; he was not its author.