(openPR) - February 12th is Darwin Day, which appeals to the spirit of research and humanity in honour of the British nature researcher. medicalpicture® is celebrating this day with its own series of pictures for the creator of the theory of evolution.

Even nowadays the name Darwin draws different reactions from different people – even though Darwin himself cannot help it. Charles Robert Darwin, who was born on February 12th, 1809 in Shrewsbury and died on April 19th, 1882 in London, is arguably one of the most frequently misunderstood scientists of all time. And for no other misunderstood scientist has this lack of understanding had such devastating consequences.

Looking down from beyond, perhaps Darwin views it as a late compensation that a group of British and American scientists and intellectuals organize the Darwin Day every year in his honour. Once again on February 12th, the day has arrived and the 200th anniversary of his birthday will be in the year 2009.

“The Origin of Species”
It was nearly 150 years ago that Darwin’s most successful and at the same time controversial book was published: “On the Origin of Species”, 1859. With soon to be famous slogans such as “Survival of the Fittest”, he described the observations which he made while sailing around the world with the “Beagle” and in particular on the various islands of the Galapagos Archipelago. Many of the insights from the evolution theory which he developed are common knowledge nowadays. However, the widespread popularity of his arguments has led to broad misuse. Without critical assessment, the notion of “Social Darwinism”, for example, transferred his teaching on natural selection to the development of human society. The German National Socialists exploited this as a foundation for their erroneous belief in the superiority of Arian human beings and for their deadly reign.

Due to this in particular, the initiators of the Darwin Day have focussed entirely on the scientific merits of the nature researcher. Their goal is an annual international day of commemoration for the spirit of research and humanity.
Darwin himself, whose has been portrayed on the British 10 pound bill since 2000, no longer experienced the worst abuse of his name himself, nor did he experience his own rehabilitation. His turtle Harriet, which he brought back from the Galapagos Islands himself in 1935, did though. She died of heart failure a few months ago at the biblical age of 176 years.

Downloads
PDF catalogue Darwin Day www.medicalpicture.de/images/darwindayen.pdf

Weblinks
home: www.medical-picture.com
presse: www.medicalpicture.net
Darwin-Feature: www.medicalpicture.de/cont_108.lang_en.darwinday.php

medicalpicture GmbH was founded in 2002 in Cologne, Germany and is a subsidiary of DocCheck AG, Cologne. The group is the leading cooperative in the healthcare market in Germany. medicalpicture operates the fastest growing, web-based image database with more than 100,000 images from the worlds of health, medicine, pharmacy and science - in addition to photos, high-quality, thematically detailed medical illustrations and microphotographs. The vast majority of image authors nationally and internationally are represented on an exclusive basis. In addition to syndicated image media, medicalpicture offers solutions and services for image databases, image management and image management for the industry.

Thomas Schmidt
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