London, 24th November: Two of Charles Darwin notebooks are missing, believed to be stolen from the Cambridge University London on Tuesday.
Baaghi TV: According to reports, Darwin’s notebooks containing his pioneering ideas on evolution and his famous “Tree of Life” sketch are believed to be stolen from the Cambridge University Library.
The library said they were worth millions of pounds.
The British scientist filled the leather notebooks in 1837 after returning from his voyage on the HMS Beagle. In one book, he drew a diagram showing several possibilities for the evolution of a species and later published a more developed illustration in his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species”.
In 2001, the vast library of the University of Cambridge listed the notebooks as missing after they were moved out of the Special Collections Strong Rooms for photography to be carried out there.
Reportedly, they were believed to have been incorrectly filed within the building, which contains around 10 million books, maps and manuscripts and has one of the world’s most significant Darwin archives.
However, major research in the library’s history failed to turn up the notebooks.
“Curators have concluded the notebooks have likely been stolen,” the library said in a statement.
It also said it had informed the local police and the books had been listed on Interpol’s database of stolen artworks, called Psyche.
The University Librarian, Jessica Gardner, released a video statement appealing to the public to help.
“It is deeply regretful to me that these notebooks remain missing despite numerous wide-scale searches over the last 20 years,” she said, adding that the library has since massively improved its security systems.
“I would ask anyone who thinks they know of the notebooks’ whereabouts to get in touch. Please help,” she said.
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