Die Baum des Lebens-Skizze war zentral für die Entwicklung von Darwins Evolutionstheorie
Zwei gestohlene Notizbücher von Charles Darwin sind der Cambridge University heimlich zurückgegeben worden (via Newslet for Libraries issue #190 und bbc.com):
«The notepads date from the late 1830s after Darwin had returned from the Galapagos Islands. On one page, he drew a spindly sketch of a tree, which helped inspire his theory of evolution and more than 20 years later would become a central theory in his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species.
«The theory of natural selection and evolution is probably the single most important theory in the life and earth environmental sciences and these are the notebooks in which that theory was put together,» says Jim Secord, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University.
«They’re some of the most remarkable documents in the whole history of science.» (…)
But who returned the two postcard-sized notepads is a real whodunit. They were left anonymously in a bright pink gift bag containing the original blue box the notebooks were kept in and a plain brown envelope.
On it was printed a short message: «Librarian, Happy Easter X.» «