Celebrating 150 years of 'On the Origin of Species'
24 November 2009
It brings to an end a year of celebrations of Charles Darwin and his work, which began in February with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.
Many of the Wellcome Trust's Darwin-themed activities can be accessed online. This includes the spectacular Tree of Life animation that formed the centrepiece of Sir David Attenborough's BBC1 documentary. The Tree of Life website also features the animation as an interactive, alongside other educational and scientific resources and a blog about Darwin and evolution.
Also available are the webisodes and mini-games from the Routes series, developed in partnership with Channel 4 to engage young people in genetics and bioethics. This includes the 'Sneeze' minigame, which demonstrates how sneezing can spread colds and flu. It has been played over 14 million times.
The Trust's free experiment kits for schools, the Great Plant Hunt and Survival Rivals, are also still available. This aims to provide a free Darwin-inspired experiment to every child in the country and has given out 23 000 Great Plant Hunt and 8700 Survival Rivals kits so far.
This year also saw the Trust provide £10 million to help build the Natural History Museum's new Darwin Centre. Opened in September, the Centre houses millions of insect and plant specimens and offers members of the public a glimpse into the working lives of 200 scientists, demonstrating how discovering and collecting new species can help understand climate change and diseases like malaria.
See further details of the Trust's Darwin200 activities.
Image: Title page to the 1859 edition of 'On the Origin of Species', by Charles Darwin. Credit: Wellcome Library, London