Final answer:
Charles Darwin is renowned for creating a systematic theory of natural selection, which became the basis for biological science, explaining how species evolve over time.
Step-by-step explanation:
Charles Darwin was not the first person to discuss evolutionary processes, but he is famous because he developed a systematic theory of natural selection explaining the diversity of life and the changes in life over geological time. Darwin's work, notably Origin of the Species (1859), synthesized the ideas of earlier thinkers into a coherent framework that provided evidence for evolution. His theory was one of the first to explain the existence of fossils and biological adaptation with hard evidence and eventually became the foundation of biological science.
Prior thinkers like Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Charles Lyell, and Thomas Malthus influenced Darwin, but their ideas on how species evolved were not as definitive. Darwin's theory was bolstered by the later discovery of genetics, beginning with Gregor Mendel's principles, which explained the mechanisms of heredity that underlie evolution. Darwin's insights were also a catalyst for societal change as they influenced perspectives on social and economic success.