Views & Reviews
- By: Laura James
Charles Darwin is the face of the £10 note, and 2009 is the 200th year after his birth. It is also 150 years since publication of On the Origin of Species, his revolutionary book on evolution by means of natural selection. To prove his popularity today On the Origin of Species is presented in several different languages, including Japanese, Icelandic, Hebrew, Arabic, and braille. Although his ideas and theories were not always popular in his time, this exhibition explains why they should be so today.
The exhibition does not look directly at Darwin's impact on modern medicine, although this is something that cannot be dismissed. Darwin quit medical school after two years to take up his passion for natural sciences at Cambridge University, but his theories offer an important way to consider medical concepts. From his work we can learn that evolution is a powerful force that does not support