November 25th – According to a comprehensive report, the library of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom said on the 24th that two precious notebooks of Darwin, a British biologist and founder of evolution, are believed to have been stolen.
The notebook was listed as lost in 2001, but the library believes that it was just put somewhere in the library.
According to the introduction, there are pioneering ideas about evolution in the notebook, which are of great value.
In 1837, Darwin began to organize notes after returning home with the Royal Navy ship HMS Beagle. The Cambridge University Library said that the notes were worth millions of pounds.
In one of his notebooks, he drew several possible diagrams of species evolution. Later, in On the Origin of Species published in 1859, a more elaborate illustration was attached on this basis.
In 2000, the two notebooks were taken out of the Special Collections Strong Rooms and photographed in a separate temporary building under construction. However, in 2001, the Cambridge University Library listed the notebook as “lost” for the first time when it carried out a routine inventory in 2001.
For a long time, the museum thought that the notebook was just put somewhere in the library. Cambridge University Library has a collection of about 10 million books, maps and manuscripts, and also has one of the world’s most important Darwin archives.
However, the Cambridge University Library was unable to find those two notebooks after launching the largest search in history in 2020. The Cambridge University Library said in a statement: “The curator concluded that the notebook is likely to be stolen.”
According to the report, Cambridge University Library said that it had notified the local police that Interpol had included the notebook in the database of stolen works of art called “Psyche”.
