Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth :

Darwin200

“ Shackled legs, thumbscrews used to crush the fingers of errant female slaves, a six-year-old boy horse-whipped for handing out water in a dirty glass: these sound like scenes from a modern horror story, but all were seen by the young Charles Darwin on his travels with the Beagle around the slave-owning continent of South America. You will find no mention of them in the proudly reasoned, scientific pages of On the Origin of Species. Glance at Darwin's journals, private notebooks and family background, however, and you will find a man immersed in the rhetoric and fervent belief of the anti-slavery movement. ”

Darwin the abolitionist

“ In early 1858, on Ternate in Malaysia, a young specimen collector was tracking the island's elusive birds of paradise when he was struck by malaria...Then the fever subsided - and inspiration struck. Fittest variations will survive longest and will eventually evolve into new species, he realised. Thus the theory of natural selection appeared, fever-like, in the mind of one of our greatest naturalists. Wallace wrote up his ideas and sent them to Charles Darwin, already a naturalist of some reputation. His paper arrived on 18 June, 1858 - 150 years ago last week - at Darwin's estate in Downe, in Kent.”

How Darwin won the evolution race

“ 150 years ago, Charles Darwin unveiled his theory of natural selection. To mark this anniversary we bring you the definitive guide to the naturalist's great book, with extracts from key chapters and essays from leading scientists and thinkers.”

On the Origin of Species

“ This site currently contains more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works for understanding Darwin's context.”

The complete work of Charles Darwin online

Darwin Correspondence Project

“ Nothing in recent history of science quite tops the achievement of the volumes of Darwin correspondence. It is our own Human Genome Project.”

The Darwin Digital Library of Evolution

The goal of this undertaking is to make the full literature of evolution available online within a historically and topically coherent structure. The work of Charles Robert Darwin is our pivot, but our framework includes the 17th century to the present and encompasses the history of evolution as a scientific theory with deep roots and broad cultural consequences.