Charles Darwin at 200:An Exhibition

Building upon the success of last year’s award-winning “199th Birthday Celebration” for Charles Darwin sponsored by the Lehigh Valley Chapter of Sigma Xi, Special Collections will present an exhibition featuring works from Lehigh’s premier Darwin collection.

Included will be annotated proof copies of Darwin’s ground-breaking works in the theory of evolution, including On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.

Darwin’s contributions to scholarship are most closely associated with the theory of evolution, but his impact may be felt across a wide range of disciplines. Although his training is that of a biologist, his first published work was as a geologist.

His wide-ranging influence will be reflected in the selection of works chosen for this exhibition. Several faculty members in diverse fields will contribute thoughts about the impact of Darwin in their disciplines.

The exhibition opens in Lehigh’s Linderman Library on February 12th, the shared 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. It will be on view on the ground and first floors from February 12-June 30, 2009.

In addition the Smithsonian Institution Libraries have arranged to borrow a manuscript page from Lehigh’s first edition of On the Origin of Species, one of very few extant handwritten pages.

It will be displayed in their upcoming exhibit, Darwin as Scientist, scheduled to open in June 2009 in the Museum of Natural History Library.


--Lois Fischer Black,
  Curator of Special Collections

Article posted February 11, 2009

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