Charles Darwin Exhibition in the Science House of

Charles Darwin Exhibition in the Science House of A Coruña: “To the astonishment of Mr. Darwin”

The Sciences House The Sciencie House was the first scientist museum of A Coruña. It was inagurated in 1983, at St. Margarita´s park. It organizes many exhibitions, conferences, courses… And it has also a planetarium which offers a lot of interesting activities.

Exhibition: to the atonishment of mr. darwin Charles Darwin was born in 1809 in England. He was the naturalist who proposed the scientist theory about the evolution of the species, which was published in his book “On the origin of species by means of natural selection” (1859). This is an exhibition about his voyage on the Beagle. It lasted almost five years , beginning in December of 1831 and ending in October of 1836. During the voyage, Darwin collected specimens of different species and wrote up in a notebook all he thought that could be interesting. He also wrote letters regularly to his family, letters that are like his diary of the voyage for us.

During the voyage aboard the “Beagle” Darwin found many elements that allowed him to develop a theory that could derail the previously published by Charles Lyell. He carried out geological investigations on land collected numerous fossil specimens. He observed stunned the diversity of flora and fauna in the different places. He also began to suspect that there wasn’t an unbridgeable gap between animals and people.

In the Galapagos, Darwin discovered species varieties between the different island like finches and turtle’s shells. In Australia he looked at the marsupial rat and the platypus.

On his return Darwin published the book "Beagle Diary”. -For over a decade, he was dedicated to do crossings between animals and did numerous experiments with plants. -Then thought about the possibility that "one species change into another" and the variation in the offsprings for "adapt and change race in a changing world ". -He also found minimal morphological changes that allowed the organisms to comply with new functions in new conditions.

After receiving a letter from Alfred Wallace where he expounded his theory, Darwin noted the similarity between both theories and they decided to publish them together. In 1859 Darwin published an unusually popular book : "The Origin of Species" He outlined a simple and revolutionary theory about the creation of species based on the mechanism of natural selection and evolutionary change.