200 years on

Let me start with a piece of trivia in keeping with the theme of the blog's title: two of the greatest men in human history, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, were born on the same day, February 12, 1809. What are the odds on that? The coincidence doesn't end there, however. We normally think of Darwin as an apolitical scientist, but as a recent Nature article notes, one of the key motivating factors behind his ideas on evolution was his revulsion for slavery and his desire to debunk any purported scientific argument for racism. Just two years after the publication of Darwin's seminal The Origin of Species in 1859, Lincoln became the American President, and the abolition of slavery in the US followed soon after. It is unlikely that Lincoln was aware of Darwin's ideas; seemingly the two men on different continents were destined to be linked by their shared, visionary ideals. It is indeed fitting that the 200th anniversary of their birth has been marked by Barack Obama's inauguration.