English Heritage is asking people to to help track down Charles Darwin's missing Galapagos notebook which contains the scientist's on-the-spot observations and which would prove invaluable when he was later writing the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago today (24 November).
The notebook went missing - it was possibly stolen around the early 1980s from the home of Charles Darwin, Down House in Kent, before the house came under the care of English Heritage.
GCT Ambassador and Charles Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes, supports the English Heritage appeal. "Our family always felt that the best Darwin material should be at Down House so that the public could see it in his home. The Galapagos notebook is of outstanding value for the history of science. If Darwin had not posed the questions in that notebook, he might never have written On the Origin of Species. The notebook was almost certainly stolen around the 1980s. But I am hopeful that it is only a matter of time before it resurfaces and when it does, it must be returned to English Heritage and Down House."
The notebook went missing - it was possibly stolen around the early 1980s from the home of Charles Darwin, Down House in Kent, before the house came under the care of English Heritage.
GCT Ambassador and Charles Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes, supports the English Heritage appeal. "Our family always felt that the best Darwin material should be at Down House so that the public could see it in his home. The Galapagos notebook is of outstanding value for the history of science. If Darwin had not posed the questions in that notebook, he might never have written On the Origin of Species. The notebook was almost certainly stolen around the 1980s. But I am hopeful that it is only a matter of time before it resurfaces and when it does, it must be returned to English Heritage and Down House."
