Darwin’s notes reported stolen from Cambridge
University finally calls in police after 20-year search for missing volumes
CHARLES DARWIN helped solve the mystery of human origins. But now he’s at the centre of a mystery himself. Two of his notebooks, missing for 20 years, are believed to have been stolen from the Cambridge University Library.
The leather- bound volumes, which include an early sketch of Darwin’s tree of life, were taken out of their secure room in 2000 to be photographed at a temporary studio, and have not been seen since. Staff initially believed they had been misplaced.
But years of searching the 125 miles of shelves has proved fruitless. Instead, Dr Jessica Gardner, a librarian, has conducted a review and announced the e “highly highly colcol lectable” documents ments were not misfiled, but ut stolen and has appealed aled to the public for help elp in tracking down n the 180-year-old works. orks.
She said: “My predecessors genenuinely believed ed t hat what had ad happened was s that these had been mis-shelved or misfiled and they took forward extensive searches over the years in that genuine belief.
“There have been searches over 20 years but they have not led to their discovery on our premises.”
Police have now been contacted about the missing documents and they have been added to Interpol’s list of stolen artworks.
A spokesman for the university said the library had “transformed significantly” in the past two decades and now has CCTV and a dedicated security team.
The notebooks, the size of a postcard, reveal Darwin’s t houghts f ol l owing hi s return from the Galapagos Islands and are worth millions of pounds.
Prof Jim Secord, a Cambridge historian, said: “The notebooks are without question among the most iconic documents in the whole history of science. They illuminate not only Darwin’s path to his theory of evolution by natural selection, but also his preliminary ideas and the depth of his reading, research and reflection.”
Antiquarian book sellers both in the UK and abroad have advised that there is no way that the manuscripts could be sold on the open market because they are simply too well known.
To be entrusted with a national treasure is a responsibility for any museum. To mislay one must be mortifying. Cambridge University Library, one of the world’s largest, had in its possession two notebooks in which Charles Darwin penned his first ideas for a theory of evolution. One includes a sketch of the tree of life. To call the notebooks priceless would be an understatement but they are now missing, presumed stolen.
They were last seen 20 years ago and despite searches of the miles of shelving to see if they have been wrongly filed, they have not been found. The person suspected to have walked off with them when they were removed from a strong room for research would surely be found pretty low on Darwin’s tree of life, alongside the amoeba.