Happy Birthday Darwin!

Tomorrow, Feb 12th, Harvard and thousands of other institutes and universities will celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday with quite a lot of fanfare: cake will be served in all of the dorm rooms, leading scientists will speak on the effect Darwin's research has had on their own, and people will be reading aloud all day from his books in every corner of campus!  Also, this entire YEAR is devoted to celebrating the 150th anniversary since Darwin's publication "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection".  I love evolution.  Both my PhD thesis and my current research are based on the foundations of evolution and the revolution that Darwin started.  I think I'll teach courses on evolutionary biology and microbial evolution and the evolution of cancer.  And to top it off, Z's dad has spent his career researching and writing books about Darwin and working on a collaboration in Cambridge (UK) called the Darwin Correspondence Project thats goal is to compile all of the proliferative writings and communications of Darwin!  We have lots to talk about during the holidays, her dad and I.  Darwin was a philosopher and a writer - the group has found somewhere around 14, 500 letters written by him and they're still looking for more!  So find yourself a piece of cake tomorrow and join the celebration  (or you could write a letter to someone too!).