Darwin Day 2027 is on Friday

About Darwin Day

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England. In 1831 he joined HMS Beagle as its naturalist for a voyage that lasted five years, and the observations he made on that trip fed decades of work on how species change over time. He set out his theory of evolution by natural selection in On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. Darwin Day uses his birthday less as a tribute to one man than as a prompt to talk about evolution, the scientific method and the value of good science teaching.

According to the history published on the Darwin Day website, the organized push for an annual celebration came from three enthusiasts. Robert Stephens encouraged the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley to start a yearly Darwin Day event in 1995, Massimo Pigliucci began organizing Darwin Day events at the University of Tennessee in 1997, and Amanda Chesworth joined Stephens to incorporate the Darwin Day Program in New Mexico in 2000. Two years later it was reincorporated in California as a nonprofit, the Darwin Day Celebration. Ahead of Darwin's 200th birthday in 2009 it teamed up with the American Humanist Association, and in 2022 the National Center for Science Education took over the website, which lists events submitted by organizers around the world.

In the United States, Darwin Day is not an official holiday. Members of the US House, led by Rep. Jim Himes, have introduced resolutions in several sessions expressing support for the day, such as H.Res. 123 in 2019, but simple resolutions like these are nonbinding and do not create a holiday. Most celebrations are local: lectures, museum programs, school projects and birthday parties held by science and humanist groups.

Sources: Darwin Day: History, Christ's College, Cambridge: A Timeline of the Life of Charles Darwin, Natural History Museum: Charles Darwin, history's most famous biologist, Congress.gov: H.Res.123, 116th Congress (2019). How we check dates.

How to mark Darwin Day

• Visit a natural history museum and seek out the fossil and specimen displays that show how groups of animals or plants changed over long stretches of time.
• Read a chapter of On the Origin of Species or Darwin's account of the Beagle voyage; both are in the public domain and free to read online.
• Check the Darwin Day events listing for a talk near you, or host your own lecture, film night or reading group at a library or school.
• Spend an hour in a garden, park or tide pool noting how individuals of the same species differ, the kind of variation natural selection works on.
• Thank a biology teacher, or donate well-reviewed books about evolution to a school or public library.

Darwin Day dates