Darwin 200 – a vision for the 21st century

February 2009 sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. In July 2008, the world will celebrate the 150th anniversary of one of the greatest scientific milestones in history.  At a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on 1st July 1858 the paper from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace outlining, for the first time, the theory of evolution by natural selection was read.  

Events for Darwin 200, 2009

Several lectures throughout the year on relevant topics, including some from Professor Tony Campbell on Charles Darwin's health and family life.

The school's Science Aglow will be tailored towards natural history.

Charles Darwin and Pembrokeshire

Charles Darwin was born on 12th February 1809. His principle of natural selection, argued so brilliantly in his ‘Origin of Species’ revolutionised biological thought and the attitude of the general public to science. Evolution and natural selection remain the unifying concept in biology, and are key issues for modern medical research and practice. Yet without Wales Darwin might never have come up with the idea. In the summer of 1831 he went of on a crash geology course in North Wales with the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, the first Professor of Geology at Cambridge University. When he got back home to The Mount at Shrewsbury he found a letter with an invitation to act as companion and naturalist on a surveying ship, The Beagle. Darwin had been inspired by Wales and in 1834, on land during a stop off in South America he observed to his sister Susanna:

‘I look out of my window. The view is magnificent. But Snowden (sic) to my mind looks much higher and much more beautiful than any peak in the Cordilleras.’

Wales, and Pembrokeshire in particular, have some extraordinary links with evolution. Sedgwick and Murchison were two major geologists of the nineteenth century. Travel 100 miles south from Holyhead mountain and you will pass over 1000 million years of evolutionary history. Hence the major era where there was an evolutionary explosion of animals and plants was named the Cambrian, after the Latin for Wales. The era lasting some 2000 million years before this is the pre-Cambrian. Then the Silurian and Ordovician periods are named after ancient Welsh tribes that lived millennia ago, where these rocks and the fossils in them were first discovered. The unique natural history of Wales has inspired generations of visitors for centuries. Alfred Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, was born in Usk, and was first captivated by natural history while surveying with his brother around Neath. When he returned from his ground breaking visit to the Malay Archipelago he tried to learn Welsh, and set up a small museum in Neath that is still there. Darwin’s cousins lived at Cresselly in south Pembrokeshire, and his wife Emma brought his children there for holidays. There are two families descended from senior officers and great comrades of Darwin on The Beagle. These were BJ Sulivan and John Lort Stokes, both of whom eventually became distinguished Admirals. Tenby played an important role in enthusing Victorian naturalists about marine life, particularly after the naturalist Philip Gosse published his now famous ‘A seaside holiday in Pembrokeshire’. TH Huxley, Darwin’s ‘bulldog’ and eventual :President of the Royal Society, came on his honeymoon to Tenby and and wrote enthusiastically to Darwin about his finds there. And the most famous lithographs of Darwin were produced by a man whose descendants live in Pembrokeshire.

And remember you don’t have to go to the Galapagos islands to see Darwin’s finches. For what else are the puffins, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and choughs but ‘Darwin’s finches of Pembrokeshire’ with their amazing beaks adapted beautifully for their own specific purposes.

If you are interested in Charles Darwin please contact our Director of Science Professor Tony Campbell

campbellak@Cardiff.ac.uk