Reproduction / Darwin Online 2009 stamps from Gibraltar used images now available in the online collectionReproduction / Darwin Online
British naturalist and evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was a scholar who amassed a vast collection of books, documents, and letters, in addition to his own writings and drawings. His collection is now available on the website darwin-online.org.uk, the result of two decades of digitization efforts. The virtual library comprises more than 300,000 pages of searchable text, 120,000 manuscripts, and 18,000 illustrations related not only to the natural sciences, but also to economics, philosophy, chronic diseases, and a diverse range of scientific references. It also contains drafts of Darwin’s 1859 book The Origin of Species, caricatures of the scientist, and even his wife Emma’s recipe book. The researchers who created the website wrote introductions and editorial notes to help contextualize the collection. The project was led by British science historian John van Wyhe of the National University of Singapore (Nexus, February 26).
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