Britain’s Galápagos offers insight into evolutionary ideas
The living laboratory where Charles Darwin developed much of his evolutionary thinking, described by scientists as “Britain’s Galápagos”, is to reopen to the public next month to mark the bicentenary of the great biologist’s birth.
A £900,000 revamp of Down House, the Darwin family home near Orpington, Kent, will give visitors fresh insights into the story of evolution, with a new exhibition and the opportunity to be guided around its grounds by leading intellectuals.
Sir David Attenborough, Lord Bragg and the evolutionary biologist Steve Jones, are among the narrators of a multimedia tour of the gardens and fields around Down House, which will set out on handheld monitors their role as a natural laboratory for Darwin’s science. Professor Jones, of University College London, described the site as “Britain’s Galápagos”, because the observations that Darwin made there were as important to his intellectual development as those that he made during the voyage of HMS Beagle to South America.
Down House and its surrounding countryside have also been nominated by the Government as a World Heritage Site, to mark the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, which both fall this year...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
A £900,000 revamp of Down House, the Darwin family home near Orpington, Kent, will give visitors fresh insights into the story of evolution, with a new exhibition and the opportunity to be guided around its grounds by leading intellectuals.
Sir David Attenborough, Lord Bragg and the evolutionary biologist Steve Jones, are among the narrators of a multimedia tour of the gardens and fields around Down House, which will set out on handheld monitors their role as a natural laboratory for Darwin’s science. Professor Jones, of University College London, described the site as “Britain’s Galápagos”, because the observations that Darwin made there were as important to his intellectual development as those that he made during the voyage of HMS Beagle to South America.
Down House and its surrounding countryside have also been nominated by the Government as a World Heritage Site, to mark the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, which both fall this year...