BHL - Biodiversity Heritage Library

This is a SnapShot of BHL in my iTunes

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

If you enjoy topics related to Biodiversity and the Origin of Species, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has over 64,000 volumes digitalised from known authors, such as Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace.

Authors that with their knowledge contributed to the development of Natural Sciences therefore deserving a special mention here. Using the iTunes application Darwin's personal notes left on his private library estate, at the University of Cambridge, have been digitally reconstructed and placed among the best volumes of the collection. 

For free, you can download almost all of these books and enjoy their original pictures and their authors private comments.

BHL also sponsors a blog full of interesting articles and every week a different perspective of a scientist' work is eligible for his contribution on the scientific outlook community. 

This week the scientific work chosen was the historical framework of the british naturalist Afred Russel Wallace, known as Darwin's man behind the scenes. 

Known in history as second after Darwin, in a position as unfair as Buzz is over Armstrong, BHL brings us some light over Wallace roll in all the process of the natural selection and the transmutation of species theory.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

Map from Wallace's book - "ISLAND LIFE"

The Surprising Subject of the First Book of Photographs - Algae

If you do not know what was about the first book of photographs published, Scientific American will let you know.

In 1843 Anna Atkins, the daughter of John George Children, a scientist who worked in the British Museum’s Natural History Department was taught by her father more about science that most girls could expect to learn in those days, and it seems to have sparked a life-long love in her.

She and her father knew Sir John Herschel, the inventor of the cyanotype, and he, or someone who knew him, *cough*, exposed her to the new technique in about 1842 or 43. more here. 

Algae - Anna Atkins - 1843