-- Humanist Network News #33

[webmdave]

Summary: We are dedicating this entire program to one story. During the 1970s, P.Thomas Carroll read and transcribed hundreds of Charles Darwin'spersonal correspondences for research purposes. Carroll shares hisstory of becoming intimately familiar with the great 19th centuryevolutionary biologist over the course of several years and 14,000letters.

Show Notes:

P. Thomas Carroll is the executive director of the Hudson MohawkIndustrial Gateway in Troy, N.Y. But between 1972 and 1975, to pay hisway through graduate school, he produced a reference book on thecontents of more than 700 letters by Charles Darwin that are now in theLibrary of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. That jobled to his becoming the first paid employee of the DarwinCorrespondence Project in 1975.

In total there are more than 14,000 letters written by and to CharlesDarwin. And most of those letters were written in Darwin's notoriouslybad handwriting!

Historians often develop an intimate kind of relationship with thepeople they are researching and Carroll is no exception. And sinceDarwin did not write his letters with the idea that they would bepoured over by scholars one day, a particularly intimate portrait ofthe man appeared before Carroll's eyes.

This is Carroll's story of peeking over Darwin's shoulder.

Songs:

Natalie Walker
"Pink Neon" (mp3)
from "Pink Neon"
(Dorado Records)

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"Sound Scientist" by Bill (via Podsafe Audio)

"Charles Robert Darwin" by The Artichoke Band

Links:

P. Thomas Carroll's website | Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway | An Annotated Calendar of the Letters of Charles Darwin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society | The Darwin Correspondence Project

Call the HNN listener Comment line: (877) 659-1515.

 

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