Honoring 150 Years of Darwin’s Origin of Species 

Courtesy of Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation (background and center); ©2009 JupiterImages (top right); NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team (bottom)

What questions are more profound and provocative than:

• How did life begin?

• How have humans evolved?

• How are climate change and other ecological stresses currently forcing evolution?

• Could the process of evolution have worked the same on other planets, even to the point of evolving life?

• What will be science’s next big evolution discovery?

These and other questions — which are as timely, controversial and news-worthy as ever — are addressed in a new, free, online special report released by the National Science Foundation entitled Evolution of Evolution: 150 Years of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” 

On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. It became the most significant scientific work in the last two centuries, challenging and changing how the world views nature, the environment and mankind. Honoring the book’s 150th anniversary, the report is a multi-disciplinary one-stop-shop of resources on evolution and Darwin himself that are available nowhere else — including graphics; interviews and essays by a team of international evolutionary experts; fast-read texts; a timeline that summarizes major intellectual and technological achievements that advanced our understanding of evolution; and downloadable documents.

Going wide and deep, Evolution of Evolution: 150 Years of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species provides a sweeping, at-a-glance explanation of how Origin cut an intellectual swath through anthropology, biology, the geosciences, polar sciences and even astronomy, and why it likely will continue to serve as the organizing framework for the sciences into perpetuity.

While the report details scientific advances enabled by the theory of evolution, it also entertains by covering the hot-tempered criticisms, longstanding hoaxes, and dedicated scholarship inspired by Origin.

For further information: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/darwin.