Darwin Day

Charles Darwin, was an English Geologist, who amongst other things was best known for his contribution towards the science of evolution. He was the first scientist to publish a coherent theory of Evolution by Natural selection. Even though he wasn’t the first to intuitively suspect that species evolved from a common ancestor, but he was the first to publish a coherent theory and bring forth evidence for it.

To commemorate the anniversary of his birth, Darwin Day is celebrated on February 12, every year. Along with the aim of highlighting his contribution to science, a more general objective of celebrating the day is to promote and popularize science in general. The day has been sporadically celebrated since his death in 1882 at the age of 73, and it was formally celebrated for the first time in 1909, when more than 400 scientists and dignitaries from 167 countries met in Cambridge to honor Darwin’s contributions and the event was widely reported and garnered a lot of public interest.

In the late 1990s, two Darwin enthusiasts, Amanda Chesworth and Robert Stephens, co-founded an unofficial effort to promote Darwin Day and incorporated the “Darwin Day Program”. Darwin Day Celebration redesigned the Web site, DarwinDay.org, from a static presentation of information about the Darwin Day Program to a combination of education about Darwin and the Darwin Day Celebration organization, including automated registration and publication of planned and past celebratory Events and the automated registration of people who want to receive emails or make public declaration of support for Darwin Day. The website is now operated by the International Darwin Day Foundation, an autonomous program of the American Humanist Association.

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