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Organic Diversity and Evolution Exhibit at Memorial Library
Posted 11/24/2009
MADISON, Wis. –As a measure of the recent collaboration of the UW General Library System with campus natural science museums, Kenneth Frazier, Director, invited the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum, with collaboration of the Wisconsin State Herbarium, to present an exhibit 
commemorating the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” by Charles Darwin, in 1859. The exhibit will be mounted in the entry foyer of the Memorial Library from December 9, 2009 through February 2010. Consideration is given to the roots of Darwin’s thinking in the organization and production of his great biological synthesis. Modern examples are to be included.
The exhibit will briefly introduce viewers to the background information available to Charles Darwin- the ideas to which he was exposed and the books he read. Letters and correspondence with Darwin will be shown. His five year voyage on the Beagle will be outlined, with greater focus on his disproportionately short, but very important field work in the Galápagos Islands. The early formulation of his ideas on natural selection, his major synthesis giving a mechanism for organic change, will be shown in a catalogue of Darwin’s major publications.
The exhibit further demonstrates divergent and convergent evolution, using carnivorous plants and orchids as examples. The concept of adaptation is illustrated by the biomechanics of mammals, showing adaptive changes to facilitate speed or strength. Wall charts are to provide examples of early taxonomic classification systems of organisms, juxtaposed with the remarkable new systems of classification based on molecular comparisons.
Attention is again called to the current large exhibit “Science Circa 1859: On the Eve of Darwin’s Origin of Species” in Special Collections (9th floor, Memorial Library) showing examples of scientific developments of the first half of the 19th century, at the time Charles Darwin was formulating his remarkable ideas on animal diversity, its history, and mechanism.
