The Impish Side of Evolution's Icon
By James T. Costa
“But I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.” —Charles Darwin
This Article From Issue
March-April 2018
Volume 106, Number 2
Page 104
People commonly think of Charles Darwin as a staid and serious naturalist. This conception, no doubt, is reinforced by his various portraits—you surely know them: his unsmiling and earnest visage projecting a buttoned-up Victorian seriousness, even melancholy. Yet these characteristics tell us more about Victorian portraiture convention and photographic technology (requiring that the subject hold still for a long time) than the person.
Illustration by Stephanie Freese
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