CAMBRIDGE, U.K—The much-awaited Darwin Anniversary Festival began last night with a opening ceremony in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, an appropriate spot given it was founded by John Henslow, one of Charles Darwin's most important teachers during his college years here. (The garden has a new audio tour to celebrate the Henslow-Darwin connection.) 
University Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard (right) reminded those attending the ceremony that Henslow's nagging of Darwin to properly collect and label specimens was arguably central to his student's later great achievements. Richard's talk took place just a few hundred meters from the garden site where the university is building a research facility in which plant biology, and plant evolution in particular, will be studied; the facility will even host specimens collected by Darwin on his Beagle voyage.
After Richard, Bruce Alberts (below), editor-in-chief of Science, spoke about science education, especially the challenges of teaching evolution in the United States. He stressed that science must be taught as a "way of knowing," not as "revealed wisdom" from remote experts.
Participants in the Wellcome Trust-sponsored Evolving Words poetry and spoken word workshops then took over, followed by the beat-driven lyrics of Darwin rapper Baba Brinkman. While the next few days of the festival will highlight the tremendous impact Darwin had on science, philosophy, religion, and more, it's good to remember that the scientist was a normal man whose children liked to use his papers, even ones from On the Origin of Species, for their cartoonish drawings, including one that Cambridge University Library staff members call the "Battle of Vegetables."
—John Travis
Images: K. Travis
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