It's Darwin Day. Happy b-day, Chucky D.!

Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology. Today he's reintroducing his 2009 letter to Charles Darwin that was read on BBC Radio:

My letter to Charles Darwin on his birthday

In 2009, shortly after WEIT came out, I was asked by the BBC to write a letter to Charles Darwin and read it on the air. The letter was supposed to convey my sentiments to the old chap and bring him up to date on what had happened to evolutionary biology since he became food for his beloved earthworms. That letter later appeared on the Oxford University Press blog, which has given The New Republic permission to reprint it today.

If you want to read it, and what I thought important to tell the deceased sage, go to the New Republic‘s column:, “It’s Charles Darwin’s 205th birthday and people still don’t accept evolution: A letter to the man behind the theory.”  I’ll just give you the first paragraph:

My Dear Mr. Darwin,

Happy 200th birthday! I hope you are as well as can expected for someone who has been dead for nearly 130 years. I suppose that your final book, the one about earthworms, has a special significance for you these days. Are the worms of Westminster Abbey superior to the ones you studied so carefully in the grounds of your home at Downe in Kent? They’ve certainly mulched some distinguished people over the years!

There’s a lot more.

via whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com

Image: 1986 photograph of Darwin, attributed to Julia Margaret Cameron.