Trinity honours graduate who has become leading authority on Darwin

Prof Janet Browne’s interest in Charles Darwin was sparked as a TCD botany student in the early 1970s

CHARLES DARWIN'S theory of evolution has remained "in essence the same" since the publication of On The Origin of Speciesin 1859, the Aramont professor in the history of science at Harvard University, Janet Browne, told an audience in Trinity College, Dublin, yesterday.

Prof Browne, a 1972 graduate in zoology from the college, was one of five recipients of honorary degrees at Trinity yesterday.

A leading authority on the life of Darwin and author of an acclaimed two-part biography, she gave a School of Natural Sciences lecture on Darwin’s life and work prior to receiving her degree.

Speaking in the lecture theatre in the botany department, she recalled how it was a final year series of lectures there by Prof David Webb on the history of science that caused her to begin to study the subject.

“I was hooked. I thought it was such an interesting thing and that I should take a year out and do a master’s.”

She completed a PhD on Darwin in London and subsequently became one of a number of editors working on The Correspondence of Charles Darwinvolumes.

Later still she wrote her prize-winning two-part work, which has been hailed internationally as the definitive Darwin biography.

Prof Browne said that since the formulation of Darwin’s theory it had remained in essence the same, though it had been restructured through advances in genetics and molecular genetics. “It is kind of a different theory now,” she said. Also, it had spread out from science into other areas.

She said that On the Origin of Species did not mention God or humans, but they were the two subjects that it sparked most debate about.

After his 1831 to 1836 voyage on the Beagle, during which he collected and examined natural history material, Darwin’s doctrinal faith waned, Prof Browne said, though he retained “a sense of wonder and possibly even some sense of the supernatural.”

Later, speaking to The Irish Times, Prof Browne, who is English, said she had been interested in Darwin and evolutionary biology since she was young and used to attend lectures in the Natural History Museum in London. "I was a bit of a museum geek."

After completing her PhD in London she got a job working in an antiquarian booksellers in London. It was while investigating markings on a pamphlet made by Darwin that she first visited the Darwin archives in Cambridge. They have been a major part of her professional life ever since.

“Darwin is the one who made biology. His theory holds it all together.”

Darwin was born 200 years ago, on February 12th, 1809, and Prof Browne has spoken at a number of conferences on his life and work this year. “Evolutionary biology is the hottest topic alive at the moment. Stunning advances are being made,” she said. “The momentum is great and increasing.”

Asked about creationism in the US and the number of people there who reject evolution, she said her move from London to Harvard had brought home to her how different the US is from the UK. The US has a history of cultural diversity and as a teacher there she had become much more sensitive to that diversity, she said.

Prof Browne is currently working on a visual and cultural history of the gorilla. When it first became known in Europe in the middle 19th century, it was depicted as a vicious animal and viewed as such in the context of the theory of evolution.

It took 150 years for its true character to be revealed.

Honorary degrees were also given yesterday to Nobel Prize winner in economics Prof Amartya Sen; Irish artist Patrick Scott; children’s literature specialist Robert Dunbar and leading nanoscientist Prof Sir Fraser Stoddart.