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We're here in the Museum's Library and Archives,
which houses the work of a revolutionary scientist far ahead of his time...
Charles Darwin.
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Charles Darwin was an English scientist, and he studied, and traveled, and wrote about almost everything.
His research started around 1830 when he was a student at the University of Edinburgh.
And his most noted work was on what we 
 now consider evolution.
The idea that natural variations occur...
and then natural processes and forces select the ones best for the situation...
whatever it may be.
And in 1831, Charles Darwin went on the HMS Beagle...
The Beagle's second voyage was to survey the coastline of South America for the British Navy.
Darwin was brought aboard to serve as a naturalist who would make specimens,
and gather observations of plants and animals along the voyage.
And they came back in 1836.
Darwin started out by contributing to the record of the voyage...
and a volume on the coral reefs...
next, a volume on the volcanoes...
and then a volume of his journals...
and then Darwin began research on A Monograph On The Sub-Class Cirripedia, or known as barnacles.
And we have volumes one and two,
here in MPM's Library.
He started the research in 1844.
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And he kept on going...
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because he realized there was no standard  classification for the Cirripedia.
And they were the first books to cover all the known barnacles.
His monograph was, in part, for him to test his ideas of evolution...
that all these small creatures started developing in the same way, and branched out.
Different variations for different situations.
His theories, along with those of his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace,
are the foundation of modern evolutionary biology.
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Now at the Museum's Reference Library and Archives,
visitors have the unique opportunity to see the progression of science.
First starting with the fundamental works of Charles Darwin and other innovative thinkers,
which was then followed-up and built upon by scientists
years later.
And this wide collection of knowledge, gathered by scientists past and present,
facilitates MPM researchers...
and may lead to future iterations yet to be written...
and breakthroughs yet to be discovered.
