Campus Kicks Off Darwin-Lincoln
Anniversary Celebration with Series of Events, Lectures

Susan Brown | January 12, 2009

Feb. 12, 2009 marks 200 years since the births of two men whose ideas and actions helped to shape the modern world: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.

Both men were controversial in their time—Lincoln for opposing slavery and refusing to allow southern states to secede from the union, and Darwin for challenging accepted ideas of how abundantly diverse forms of life came to inhabit the Earth.

A series of events at UC San Diego this anniversary year will reflect on both men’s roles in the history of ideas and celebrate their achievements.

Of the two, Lincoln’s ideas are more settled. Americans have a national identity, the states seem indivisible, and slavery is a crime. Darwin’s ideas still rankle some, but the fundamental principle he proposed in 1859—evolution by means of natural selection—has not only endured, but has become a lens through which biologists view life. One hundred fifty years of subsequent discovery have strengthened rather than overthrown this central idea.

“Darwin and his ideas continue to shape modern biology and the work of scientists around the world today,” said Steve Kay, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences. “We have the technology now to hunt down and sequence the genes that cause human genetic diseases. But the reason we can do it is because of the concepts that Darwin developed, the connections he made about the relatedness between different forms of life.”

Last year, the Division of Biological Sciences began a series of public lectures on evolution, held at the San Diego Museum of Natural History. The lecture series will continue through 2009 under the title Nature Matters, with professors of evolutionary biology and ecology from UC San Diego talking about their work.

On February 12, biology students will throw a birthday party for Darwin and kick off a competition for artistic expressions of the continuing influence of Darwin’s ideas. Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer will announce the winners of that contest before giving a public lecture on April 2 about why “Darwin Matters.”

Leading minds in evolutionary biology from around the world will visit the campus throughout the winter and spring terms to share their ideas with the public and students and, on April 3, will gather for a scientific symposium on the latest issues in evolutionary biology. 

Even while Darwin’s ideas continue to guide biological research, some factions of society still resist their influence. Other events on campus this year will explore the history of contention over how evolution should be taught in the science classrooms of public schools, culminating in a mulitmedia performance about the Scopes trial with opportunity for the audience to respond.

Differing views of what is right nearly tore this country in two during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. His role in holding the nation together at a pivotal point in its history has made Lincoln the measure against which subsequent presidents have judged their own decisions

Several scholars will visit UC San Diego this year to talk about Lincoln’s legacy and place his ideas and presidency in historical perspective.

Lincoln’s eloquent words will be featured in performances by the La Jolla Symphony on campus in February, which will also include a work drawn from UC San Diego composer Anthony Davis’s opera about slavery. And in a measure of just how deeply both men’s legacies have infiltrated the culture, a newly commissioned musical portrait will evoke Darwin’s achievements.

Please visit UC San Diego’s Darwin-Lincoln Anniversary web site for more information about all of these events.