One of the most important scientific drafts in history is to be published online for the first time.
A collection of papers by Charles Darwin are to be published online for the first time. Photo: Charles Darwin. Credit: Public Domain
Around 90,000 pages of manuscripts, field notes, photographs and sketches, among which are included early drafts for Charles Darwin's famous theory of evolution, will be made available online as part of the Darwin Online project.
Previously the papers had only been made available to scholars at Cambridge University Library which had the collection presented to them by the Darwin family in 1942.
The papers include letters to his wife, observations of his young son and most importantly an early sketch of his scientific writings and records of experiments.
Dr John van Wyhe, the director of the Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online at Cambridge University, said of the collection: "Darwin changed our understanding of nature forever. Only a handful of scholars across the world have seen all of this material."
"People are now being given access to the real Darwin, not just the stuff that has been filtered by the experts," he added.
A set of pages in the collection of most interest to scholars dates from 1842 and records Darwin's first musings of his grand theory.
"There is a kind of fascination about it having all the original handwriting and the places where he was making changes and was struggling with issues," said Dr Paul White, part of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a separate effort to catalogue Darwin's letters.
The online project began in 2002 and this is the last major set of Darwin's works to be published online.
View the Darwin Online archive here.
View blog reactions
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
Advertising
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)