Copyrighted imageCredit: Used with permission

The Open University is working in collaboration with the British Council on Darwin Now, a global initiative which celebrates the life and work of Charles Darwin and the impact his ideas about evolution have on the world today.

2009 marks the 200 year anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150 year anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and our range of content will bring Darwin’s legacy alive from exploring his life through the poetry of Ruth Padel, to discovering what his correspondence can tell us about Darwin’s networking skills. We ask Professor Jim Moore to reveal how the social and scientific context in which Darwin developed his ideas and Professor Steve Jones to reflect on the enduring nature of Darwin’s theory. We also reveal the global responses to Darwin and ask some crucial questions such as, can DNA offer clues to what makes us uniquely human? Do languages evolve in the same way as species do in nature? And what can evolution tell us about falling birth rates, the menopause and the role of parents in childcare?