Two of Charles Darwin’s notebooks containing his pioneering ideas on evolution and his famous “Tree of Life” sketch are missing, believed stolen, the Cambridge University Library said yesterday.
The British scientist filled the leather notebooks in 1837 after returning from his voyage on the HMS Beagle.
The library said they were worth millions of US dollars.
Photo: AFP / University of Cambridge
In one book, he drew a diagram showing several possibilities for the evolution of a species and later published a more developed illustration in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
The University of Cambridge’s vast library first listed the notebooks as missing in 2001 after they were moved out of the Special Collections Strong Rooms for photography to be carried out there.
NOT MISFILED
They were long believed to have been incorrectly filed within the building, which contains about 10 million books, maps and manuscripts, and has one of the world’s most significant Darwin archives.
However, a major search this year — the largest in the library’s history — failed to turn up the notebooks.
“Curators have concluded the notebooks ... have likely been stolen,” the library said in a statement.
It said it had informed local police and the books had been listed on Interpol’s database of stolen artworks, called Psyche.
CALL FOR HELP
Jessica Gardner, the university’s director of library services, released a video statement appealing to the public to help.
“It is deeply regretful to me that these notebooks remain missing despite numerous wide-scale searches over the last 20 years,” she said, adding that the library has since massively improved its security systems.
She suggested that former or current library staff, those working in the book trade or researchers, could have information.
“I would ask anyone who thinks they know of the notebooks’ whereabouts to get in touch. Please help,” she said.
The appeal was launched yesterday, Nov. 24, known as Evolution Day, since it marks the date of the publication of On the Origin of Species.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS