Happy 200 birthday Mr Charles

Today, February 12 is the birthday of this sad looking guy on the picture above. If alive Charles Darwin would be 200 years old today. Darwin's most important book The Origin of Species will celebrate 150 years old in November.

This man made an excellent impression on me since I was a school girl, as I liked sciences and specially biology. After I wastched a documentary about life and I learned about his family dramas that I really understood the dilemmas that guided him.

Charles Darwin is a scientist from a completely different scientific universe, without sophisticated laboratories and machines, from a time when research was the product of long and patient observation of nature and animals.

For five years (1831-1836) Darwin made his fundamental trip around half of the world on the ship Beagle and visited many places in Brazil including Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. The passage of Darwin in Brazil has been largely investigated and some new publications were due in 2009.



The NYT editorial today reminds us that "What Darwin proposed was not a set of immutable mathematical formulas. It was a theory of biological history that was itself set in history. That the details have changed does not invalidate his accomplishment. If anything, it enhances it. His writings were not intended to be scriptural. They were meant to be tested" (NYT,12/02/2009).

I could write about Darwin until tomorrow but I have a scientific investigation to conclude in my kitchen as five hours ago I started te stirring process of a home made doce de leite (milk jam, dulce de leche or confiture du lait). This doce is taking a lot more efforts than I could have imagine but I am pretty sure the final product will definitely justify the long effort. The dessert is not ready to be published but it will be available as soon as it is.

It is my way to celebrate Darwin's 200th and to demonstrate how proud I am to belong to the same species as Charles Darwin.