Darwin 2008

April 18, 2008 1:50 PM

Cambridge University has digitized its collection of some 30,000 items and 90,000 images by Charles Darwin. The original draft of The Origin of Species, until now available only to scholars at the Cambridge University Library, is among those now online.

"This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free," said John van Wyhe, the director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online project.

"The release of his papers online marks a revolution in the public's access to -- and hopefully appreciation of -- one of the most important collections of primary materials in the history of science," he added, describing the collection as a "treasure trove".

Along with "The Origin of Species" and other scientific papers, the collection includes photographs of him and his family, reviews of his books, newspaper clippings, as well as material revealing his home life, notably a recipe for boiling rice, inscribed in Darwin's own handwriting.

posted by chuckdarwin (7 comments total)

Shameless!
posted by cillit bang at 1:52 PM on April 18, 2008

By the way, the central URL should be darwin-online.org.uk
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:55 PM on April 18, 2008

That Darwin post just keeps evolving.
posted by yhbc at 1:58 PM on April 18, 2008

Poor anastasiav, she was the punctuation in the equilibrium after all.
posted by cashman at 1:59 PM on April 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Man, this is about as far from a vibrating broomstick as you can get -- and yet it continues to appear, day after day after day.

Sorry Chuck, its now a triple-double.
posted by anastasiav at 2:02 PM on April 18, 2008

Meh. I think my borked link kept me from seeing the doubleness.
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:11 PM on April 18, 2008

Self-link!!!
posted by ericb at 2:25 PM on April 18, 2008