The American Museum of Natural History has already placed 12 thousand pages of Charles Darwin’s manuscripts in the public domain. The works of the great scientist can be found on the official website of the museum.
The publications are carried out as part of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, which began back in 2007. Since then, 12 thousand scanned pages have already become freely available, including materials from notebooks, footnotes in the margins, abstracts to articles and other materials.
All published documents cover almost 25 years of Darwin’s life (1835-1859) and demonstrate how his ideas about evolution and his belief in the correctness of evolutionary theory were formed. In the same period, the scientist developed the concept of natural selection, gave an interpretation to the process of adaptation, and also wrote his main work – “The Origin of Species”.
Developing On the Origin of Species involved much more than pen-on-paper. This book is the fruit of a long process of research and creativity that began during Darwin’s Beagle voyage. – David Kohn, Project Manager
In June 2015, the collection of pages from Darwin’s manuscripts posted on the museum’s website should be already 30 thousand. By that time, it will cover the next period of the scientist’s life – from the publication of “The Origin of Species” in 1859 to 1882.
