HARVARD PROFESSOR TO LECTURE ON IMPACT OF DARWIN

10-29-09

Throughout the year 2009 the University of Oklahoma has been conducting a campus-wide celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. At 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, the Sam Noble Museum and the History of Science department in the OU College of Arts and Sciences will present a public lecture by Harvard University professor Janet Browne that will look at the importance of that 200th anniversary from a historical perspective. “Two hundred years of Darwin: The role of anniversaries in the history of biology” will take place in the museum’s Great Hall. Admission is free.

Browne is the Aramount Professor of the History of Science at Harvard. She specializes in reassessing Charles Darwin’s work, first as associate editor of the early volumes of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, and more recently as author of Charles Darwin: A Biography, a major 2-volume biographical study that integrates Darwin’s science with his life and times. The biography was awarded several prizes, including the James Tait Black award for non-fiction in 2004, the W.H. Heinemann Prize from the Royal Literary Society, and the Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society. She has been editor of the British Journal for the History of Science and president of the British Society for the History of Science.

For 45 minutes following Browne’s presentation, the special exhibition “Darwin at the Museum” will be open for visitors to view. This exhibition, created in partnership with the OU Libraries History of Science Collection, features a complete set of the first editions of all Darwin’s books, as well as specimens from museum collections.

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is located on the OU Norman campus at Timberdell Road and Chautauqua Avenue. Additional information about this and other programs at the museum is available online at www.snomnh.ou.edu or by calling (405) 325-4712.

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