Our Spring Reception was held on Sunday, 4th March, at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge. About 100 members and guests, including members of the English Speaking Union, enjoyed a continental breakfast prior to learning more about Charles Darwin.

After breakfast, Professor Duncan Porter gave a very interesting presentation on the life and works of Charles Darwin. His slides included details on Darwins life, his 5 year voyage on the Beagle and the other influences that led to Darwins many insightful and revolutionary publications.

Professor Porter has a worldwide reputation as a Charles Darwin expert and botany professor. He led the Cambridge University's Darwin Correspondence Project for the past six years as director after starting as a senior editor in 1991. In 2002 Dr. Porter accepted the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Excellence in Higher and Further Education from Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of the Project. He and his Darwin Project colleagues are transcribing, cataloguing and annotating all of Darwin's thousands of letters. The work will ultimately result in 30 volumes.

In addition Dr. Porter is a botany professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and named one of Virginia's outstanding scientists in 2006. His long-term plant studies have included Virginia's endangered plants, identifying the plants on the Galapagos Islands and identifying Charles Darwin's plant specimens from the voyage of the Beagle.

We then attended the Darwin exhibit at the neighboring Museum of Science. This magisterial exhibit received rave reviews on its inaugural opening at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and has been called "a spicy and enormously satisfying melange of history, science, and human interest."

Sincerely

Ralph Gillis,
Jesus College, Cambridge
President of the Society

Reception: 10am to 12am
Exhibit Tour : 12:15pm approx